Food and agricultural strategies and popular responses in Cote d'Ivoire

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Book chapter

Title:	Food and agricultural strategies and popular responses in Cote d'Ivoire
Author:	Daddieh, C. Koffie
Book title:	Coping with Africa's Food Crisis
Year:	1988
Pages:	119-143
Language:	English
Geographic term:	Ivory Coast - Côte d'Ivoire
Subjects:	political economy agricultural policy food production
Abstract:	One of the outstanding features of the Ivorian political economy since independence is not just its continued heavy dependence on the production of export commodities but that the country is apparently successful at such production. Among the sources of this success are the favourable climate and resource endowments, the flexible and secure land tenure system, the large flow of cheap foreign labour, the effective research, extension, and marketing infrastructure, subsidies and grants, the sociocultural effects of the affluence of a small planter bourgeoisie, and the government's agricultural strategy, in particular its pricing policies. Meanwhile, subsistence production has decreased. In fact the combination of aging farms and producers, an urban growth rate of 8.5 percent per annum during the decade from 1973, a slowdown in the flow of cheap migrant labour, and recent difficulties in commodity markets provides cause for concern about the ability of the country to meet its food needs unless government policy shifts in favour of the food crop producers, the majority of whom are women. Notes, ref.