Ways Forward? Technical Choices, Intervention Strategies and Policy Options 373cotton prices paid to farmers. In the irrigated rice zone of the Office du Niger,
devaluation has also brought about increased demand for domestically produced
rice, since imported Thai rice has become more expensive. As a result, farmers have
seen a rise in returns averaging 10–35 per cent per hectare, despite an increase in
input prices (Breman and Sissoko, 1998). Those farming households with live-
stock holdings have also done well following devaluation, given rising prices and
increased demand from coastal West African states.
Structural adjustment has brought other changes to certain farming areas of
Mali, particularly those covered by the CMDT and the Office du Niger. The Mal-
ian government has been required to privatize certain functions formerly carried
out by these parastatal organizations, such as provision of veterinary services. The
rapid withdrawal from veterinary service provision in 1995 led to heavy cattle
losses from disease and damaging impacts on work oxen numbers in the CMDT
zone. The CMDT has also been forced to become more transparent in terms of its
pricing policy, and the share of cotton profits to be received by each of the three
parties – farmers, the state and the CMDT. The programme to restructure the
Office de Niger has brought changes in the responsibilities and rights of tenant
farmers, providing improved security of tenure, and greater freedom over crop
choice and where to market crops. Contract farming of certain vegetables (such as
tomatoes for canning) is also now starting to develop in the irrigated lands of the
Office du Niger, with traders providing access to credit, inputs, markets and tech-
nical advice.
Credit
Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, farmers have limited access to formal financial
systems through which to gain access to credit and in which they can invest their
savings. The establishment of such systems faces serious constraints which include
low levels of income, poor infrastructure, high transaction costs and limited col-
lateral with which to hedge against risks of default (de Groote, 1995). As a result,
savings at village level are frequently held in the form of livestock, and farmers rely
heavily on informal sources of credit from neighbours and family and earnings
from migration and off-farm activities for purchase of equipment and farm inputs.
In the research sites, systems to gain access to credit have been undergoing change
as a result of structural adjustment and other measures.
Across the study sites, only in the CMDT area of southern Mali is such access
more or less assured, though even here the CMDT has passed on responsibility for
managing the loans to the National Agricultural Development Bank. In all other
sites, while projects may occasionally set up and supply credit to a limited area, in
most places farmers must rely increasingly on their own resources or on private
sector loans, usually associated with cropping under contract to a commercial
buyer. Thus, for example, for rice farmers in Mali, credit is no longer supplied by
the Office du Niger, and farmers must rely on private sources with which to pur-
chase inputs and equipment. In the southern Ethiopia research sites, most farmers