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‘Pesticides are our children now’: cultural change and the technological treadmill in the Burkina Faso cotton sector

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Abstract

Amidst broad debates about the “New Green Revolution” in Africa, input-intensive agriculture is on the rise in some parts of Africa. This paper examines the underlying drivers of the recent and rapid adoption of herbicides and genetically modified seeds in the Burkina Faso cotton sector. Drawing on 8 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Houndé region, this article contends that economic and cultural dynamics—often considered separately in analyses of technology adoption—have co-produced a self-reinforcing technological treadmill. On the one hand, male farmers seek to increase cotton production in response to an economic squeeze. At the same time, broader cultural shifts toward individualism have created labor shortages as a result of families splitting apart, parents putting their children in school, and some women and young men refusing to provide free labor. Male cotton farmers thus increase production by turning to labor-saving inputs like herbicides, but these inputs create more debt, further locking farmers into intensive production. This article thus expands on the classic concept of the technological treadmill, demonstrating how economic and cultural processes intersect within a process of agrarian change to drive labor-saving agricultural technology adoption in the Burkinabè cotton sector. This expanded treadmill concept illuminates the complex dynamics compelling farmers’ choices to opt into input-intensive agriculture, and also helps explain rising farmer differentiation, as poorer farmers struggle to stay afloat and wealthier farmers expand.

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Notes

  1. This includes costs for: backpack sprayers, motorcycles, gas, carts, corruption (paying the cotton conditioner), UNPCB (union) fees, cows, cow vaccines, cow food during the dry season, and a cow plow. Per-hectare costs include seed, fertilizer, insecticide, herbicides, meals for harvest laborers, and GPC fees. Costs can vary significantly. These cost calculations are based on group discussions with male farmers.

  2. Until recently, access to land was not a major constraint for most farmers in this area, although “older” families controlling the land have more land than more recently arrived or migrant families. However, with increasing farm size, forest conservation enclosures, rising numbers of migrant farmers, population growth, and families splitting, land is becoming limited. Thus, the strategy of increasing farm size to increase production may shift. However, pressures on land may be offset by rising social differentiation, as in U.S. farming communities, where some farmers fall out of the system and other farmers then incorporate their land (see Bell 2004).

  3. I found (CFA) wage/service rates per hectare of: 25,000 (tilling, tractor), 10,000 (delivering inputs to farm), 13,750 (seed planting/re-planting), 5500 (thinning), 10,000 (weeding, oxen), 12,500 (hilling, oxen), 6000 (spraying), 25,000 (harvest), 5000 (transportation of harvested cotton). This adds up to CFA117,750 per hectare. At CFA215,000 net income per hectare, and additional per-hectare input costs of CFA109,500, it is not profitable to hire all labor. (This calculation excludes the aforementioned fixed costs, assuming the farmer hires out all these services).

  4. The theme of Western school as a cultural threat is echoed in other historical and literary works in West Africa (Kane 1961).

Abbreviations

Bt:

Bacillus thuringiensis, refers to genetically modified Bt cotton

CFA:

The West African Franc (currency denomination); roughly 500 CFA to 1 US dollar

GM:

Genetically modified

GPC:

Groupement des Producteurs du Coton, or Cotton Producer Group

SOFITEX:

Société Burkinabè des Fibres Textiles, the parastatal cotton company in Burkina Faso

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my funding agencies: the Fulbright Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Association of University Women, and the University of Colorado Boulder Dean’s Office. Also thanks to insightful comments from Jill Harrison, Daniel Ahlquist, and anonymous reviewers. I extend deep appreciation to my research assistants and to all of my research participants. Also thanks to Mike Simsik, Gabin Korbeogo, folks at the American Association of Geographers annual meeting, and exchanges at the Pesticide Politics in Africa conference in Arusha, Tanzania in 2019.

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    Jessie K. Luna

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Luna, J.K. ‘Pesticides are our children now’: cultural change and the technological treadmill in the Burkina Faso cotton sector. Agric Hum Values 37, 449–462 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-019-09999-y

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