Since 2018, civil society in Senegal has made exciting progress in building a national agroecological movement and in the subsequent institutionalisation of agroecology in the country. However, the possibility of a profound transformation of food systems still largely depends on significant political and social issues, including government support for local management of natural resources and greater financial and political autonomy for grassroots organisations.
In Senegal, as in the entire Sahel, food systems are facing enormous challenges –from growing food insecurity to the grabbing of land and natural resources and ecosystem degradation to neoliberal policies and dependence on international market fluctuations. In response, civil society groups created DyTAES (Dynamique pour une Transition AgroEcologique au Sénégal), a platform for multi-stakeholder dialogue where actors working towards agroecological transition can pool their knowledge for more effective advocacy. Currently comprising more than 70 member organisations, DyTAES is organised around a steering committee, a technical committee, a secretariat and a general assembly. It is funded by its members and receives significant donations from international cooperation agencies.
Cross-country mobilisation
In 2018, DyTAES launched an ambitious series of national consultations and mobilisations via ‘caravans’ that travelled the length and breadth of the country. Not only did these caravans succeed in raising collective awareness about the challenges facing rural communities, but they also identified and mobilised key agroecology stakeholders scattered across the country.
In 2022, the testimonies of local actors gathered during the caravan tours along with concrete proposals for action were presented to policymakers in a major report: ‘Contribution to national policies for an agroecological transition in Senegal’. Since then, DyTAES has published policy papers on key issues including water, soil fertility, reducing dependence on chemical inputs, and sustainable food systems.
Towards the institutionalisation of agroecology?
Driven by a regional and global context that is increasingly influenced by sustainability issues, DyTAES’ ongoing communication with ministries has begun to yield promising signs of change, both in official discourse and in the formulation of public policies and national programmes.
For example, agroecological foundations have started to appear in the country’s official discourses – in the recent ‘Emerging Senegal’ environmental plan (PSE-VERT) as well as in the national strategy for food sovereignty in 2016. At the legislative level, a recent land decree that encourages the securing of collective land and the introduction of a subsidy scheme for organic inputs are the most striking examples of this recent movement towards institutionalisation.
The reshuffling of ministerial boundaries in 2022 further consolidated this trend. The Ministry of Agriculture is now responsible for rural development and food sovereignty, while the Ministry of the Environment’s portfolio includes sustainable development and the ecological transition. In addition, a focal point specifically dedicated to the agroecological transition has been appointed as the main contact for the DyTAES. Recently, with the arrival of the new government under President Bassirou Diomaye Faye, a dialogue and potential collaboration between DyTAES and the Ministry of Agriculture is being established around the distribution of subsidised organic inputs.
Stimulating transformation at the heart of the regions
Since 2021, local versions of DyTAES (Dynamiques pour une Transition AgroEcologique Locale, or DyTAEL) have been set up in several departments. Conceived as living laboratories for local change, DyTAELs bring together a range of players, including farmers‘ organisations, NGOs, representatives of agroecological initiatives and local elected representatives. They function as departmental platforms for multi-stakeholder dialogue, innovation, promotion, enhancement of farmers’ knowledge, and advocacy. These self-organising platforms are intended to remain autonomous and to facilitate the participation of all stakeholders in food systems in governance processes to promote more sustainable agriculture and greater social justice.
Since the concept was launched, DyTAELs have attracted the interest and support of national and international scientific researchers. One example is the Agroecology for Territorial Resilience in Senegal (ARTS) project run by the University of Bern, IPAR and ENDA-PRONAT with funding from the SOR4D programme. This project, which straddles the gap between research and action, aims to co-produce knowledge with the stakeholders involved by identifying, mapping and connecting local agroecological initiatives, co-producing scenarios for transforming food systems, and providing technical and communication resources to strengthen knowledge sharing and advocacy at regional, national and international levels.
The limits of a project-based approach
Despite these encouraging advances, the agroecology movement in Senegal faces major challenges. While it seems that a change in perception is happening at the heart of the official system, this is not enough to ensure the transformation of local farming. In fact, agricultural regions are full of micro-projects that have no prospect of sustainability and, as a result, are sometimes abandoned.
Although initiated by national and local players, the country’s agroecology movement, including DyTAES, remains relatively dependent on the support of international technical and financial partners. The resulting asymmetrical power relationships carry with them the risk that these partners will impose their own priorities and visions of agroecology. What’s more, in the face of neoliberal policies, international organisations have limited negotiating capacity as they must maintain a position of neutrality for obvious reasons of diplomacy and non-interference. This configuration reduces the offensive capacity of joint advocacy in the face of certain systemic injustices.
On the government side too, the dependence on international projects and programmes, the compartmentalisation of various sectors, and the lack of an inter-ministerial coordination framework are hampering the implementation of the holistic, long-term policy vision that is necessary for agroecology. The outgoing government’s agrarian policies were mainly focused on the productivity of commercial agriculture, which depends on synthetic inputs.
This dynamic has led to the use of the term ‘projectorate’ to underline the country’s dependence on projects and the lack of capacity to build a sovereign long-term political vision. Ultimately, the governance of agroecology requires the greater involvement of farmers‘ organisations and, more broadly, citizens’ organisations. Many questions and hopes are directed at the new government – in place since April 2024 – to discover whether it will go beyond simple input substitution policies and adopt the necessary structural changes.
At the local level, although the DyTAELs are promising, it is still too early to measure their real impact. Most of them are still in the early stages of organisational development, and their status, role and precise mandates must be clarified. While from a formal point of view, their autonomy gives them all the room they need to manoeuvre, in practice they are still dependent on the national DyTAES and its partners for technical and financial support.
In addition, strengthening the dynamics of agroecological transformation must go hand in hand with the DyTAELs’ ability to work with local authorities. This alliance, if it is to be truly transformative, is likely to involve conflicts and bitter negotiations, given that community consensus offers its own challenges. The DyTAELs must not only help implement equitable and participatory mechanisms for managing natural resources but must also integrate into governance arrangements to strengthen the links between citizen activism and policy action. This is a prerequisite for the development of peasant agroecology.
Still a long way to go
Since the UN FAO proclaimed Senegal as a pilot country for the agroecological transition in West Africa in 2015, the country’s civil society has managed to increase its influence, both locally and nationally. Thanks to the creation of DyTAES and DyTAELs, the Senegalese agroecology movement has established itself as a key player in national agrarian dialogue, forcing agroecology to be formally recognised in official discourse and gaining a foothold at the local level. Senegal has become a breeding ground for innovative initiatives and a laboratory for experimentation – on agroecological production, on governance, and on other interlinkages in the food system.
But significant systemic transformations are still needed to meet the challenges of food sovereignty. While the public debate is often limited to the greening of agricultural policies through superficial reforms, land and natural resource grabbing, particularly of water, is on the rise in Senegal and the rest of the Sahel. Far-reaching reforms are needed at both the national and local levels, specifically to facilitate access by family farms to productive resources and to marketing for their agroecological products.
The possibility of a sustainable, fair and equitable transformation of food systems in Senegal will require significant struggles in the years to come. The chances of success will depend mainly on the mobilisation of grassroots players, including farmers’ organisations, consumers and other local initiatives. It will also depend on the openness of those in power to dialogue and to change. We look to the new government with great hope to see whether it will follow through with the reforms needed to continue along the agroecological path.
Authors: Patrick Bottazzi is a researcher at the University of Bern and Scientific Director of the Centre for Research, Education and Action on Ecological and Social Transformations (CREATES). Absa Mbodj heads agroecological multi-stakeholder partnerships at ENDA PRONAT. Dr. Joan Bastide is research associate at the University of Bern and Director of Operations of CREATES in Senegal. Jean-Michel Waly Séne is the Executive Secretary at ENDA PRONAT. Dr. Sidy Tounkara is a researcher and coordinator of agroecological projects at the Initiative Prospective Agricole et Rurale (IPAR). Dr. Raphaël Belmin is a researcher and photographer with CIRAD-HortSys and ISRA/BAME.
Sources:
- Bottazzi, P., Bastide, J., Ba, A. & Wade, I. (2023). Les politiques agraires au Sénégal. Défis politiques et institutionnels face à la transition agroécologique. eds. Ceddia, M. and Iglicki, J. eds. JRC External Study Report.
- Bottazzi, P., Seck, S.M., Niang, M. and Moser, S. (2023). Beyond motivations: A framework unravelling the systemic barriers to organic farming adoption in northern Senegal. Journal of Rural Studies. 104: p. 103158.
- Boillat, S., Belmin, R., Bottazzi, P. (2021). The agroecological transition in Senegal: transnational links and uneven empowerment. Agriculture and Human Values, 1-20.
- Boillat, S. and Bottazzi, P. (2020). Agroecology as a pathway to resilience justice: peasant movements and collective action in the Niayes coastal region of Senegal. International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology: 1-16.
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This article is part of Issue 1-2024: Policies for Agroecology
