Farmers’ preferences of the agricultural inputs for rice farming in Senegal River Basin, Mauritania: A best-worst scaling approach

Abstract

In Mauritania, consumption of rice, which is a staple food, is increasing rapidly, because rice takes less time to cook than other cereals such as millet, sorghum, and maize. To meet this growing demand, Mauritanian food policy encourages rice imports. However, the 2008 food crisis led to rice shortage, owing to a steep rise in the price of imported rice. To ensure overall food security, the government has adopted certain agricultural policies and projects to bolster rice production in the Senegal River Basin. Under these circumstances, numerous previous studies suggested solutions for improving productivity and efficient farm management. Whereas, these studies were leaded by the field observation to grasp current farm condition and the questionnaire survey for understanding the actual amount of inputs (e.g. fertilizer and pesticide) and harvest, the preferences and perceptions of local farmers regarding rice farming have been neglected. In order to achieve the sustainable agricultural development, cooperation of local farmers is indispensable. Therefore, farmers’ perceptions should be taken into consideration of agricultural policy making.

In this study, we attempted to evaluate the farmers’ preferences of the agricultural inputs for rice farming quantitatively in Mauritania. Furthermore, we clustered farmers with similar preferences and tried to discuss the heterogeneity of preferences based on the characteristics of each group.

In order to evaluate these farmers’ preferences, a best-worst scaling (BWS) method was applied with 29 farmers on March, 2018. BWS is a method to evaluate preferences by choosing “most important attribute” and “least important attribute” one by one. In this survey, six attributes which are seed fertilizer, pesticide, irrigation, labor and machinery were assumed. Moreover, based on these results, farmers who have the similar preferences was grouped by a cluster analysis.

As the results, while most farmers value seeds and irrigation in rice production, pesticide and labor tend to be neglected. In addition, based on a cluster analysis, farmers were grouped into three groups: (1) group that emphasizes irrigation, (2) group that places the highest priority on agricultural machinery, and (3) group that prefers seeds.

On the other hand, as a characteristic of each group, Group 1 includes many farmers engaged in rice production on paddy filed equipped with irrigation facilities, and it can be seen that they understand the importance of irrigation. In group 2, farmers have relatively large-scale paddy field. In order to improve the efficiency, agricultural machineries are emphasized.