Agriculture in Benin
Animal and meat exports to nearby countries contribute a significant amount to the agricultural economy, but remains mostly outside official recorded statistics.
Corn, beans, rice, peanuts, cashews, pineapples, cassava, yams, other tubers, and vegetables and fruits are grown for local subsistence and for export to neighboring countries through informal cross-border trading activities.
Top commodities produced by quantity are cassava, yams, corn, pineapples, tomatoes, rice, cottonseed, cashew nuts, fresh fruit, and groundnuts.
Top commodities produced by value are yams, cassava, cotton lint, cashew nuts, pineapples, corn, tomatoes, cattle, hot peppers, and rice.
[1] While the GOB aims to diversify its agricultural production, Benin remains underdeveloped and dependent upon the world price for cotton and regional trade.
These same three departments also lead in the percentage of households experiencing the slightly improved situation of limited food security, Mono 49%, Atacora 48%, Couffo 47%, Borgou 34%, Collines 27%, and Donga 25%.
There are varying levels of household wealth among the departments, here listed from wealthiest to poorest: Littoral, Ouémé, Atlantique, Mono, Zou, Plateau, Donga, Collines, Borgou, Couffo, Alibori, Atacora.
[1] Benin serves as a delivery corridor for West Africa reaching more than 100 million people in the landlocked countries of Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, and the northern states of Nigeria.
Goods landed in Cotonou get placed on trucks first heading north to the border towns of Malanville in Benin and Gaya in Niger and then onto the rest of the Sahel.
While Nigerian brokers can travel up to farms in Benin to buy vegetables, local buyers often transport their fruits, mostly pineapple and oranges, to markets on the Benin-Nigeria border.
This border crossing is also where the majority of other imported agricultural products leave Benin for Nigeria, including palm oil, rice, refined sugar, and poultry meat.
However, women carrying baskets filled with yams and other items regularly pass over the border at Chikandou in central Benin heading to the Nigerian town of Tchikanda.
[1] The GOB's attempt to revitalize the cotton sector included making sure that producers/farmers are fully paid for the previous year's crop, consolidating farmer's organizations, creating village cooperatives, providing capacity building to small producers, and fortifying input committees.
[1] In the mid-2000s, the non-governmental organization TechnoServe pursued a public-private partnership to establish a processing plant, Afokantan Benin, located south of Parakou, as a joint venture between a Beninese entrepreneur and the leading Dutch cashew kernel broker Global Trading, with support from the Dutch Government Private Sector Investment Programme and the African Cashew Alliance.
Raw nuts are exported to mostly India (70% of total production), with Vietnam, Pakistan, and Singapore (25% shared between them) next, followed by Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, China, and Indonesia.
The cashew apples, the fleshy part above the nut, with an estimated production of 600,000 tons per year, go unutilized and could be used to make juice, jam, alcohol or biofuels.
With independence in 1960, the national government increased the effort and focused on improving productivity by planting around 30,000 hectares (74,000 acres) of selected oil palm seedlings between 1960 and 1974.
Challenges came: rainfall decreased and management problems rose, while external competition from Asian countries pressured profitability, leading the government to back away from the industrialized palm oil sector.
Current estimates put the land under cultivation at between 300,000 and 400,000 hectares (740,000 and 990,000 acres), mostly in Ouémé, Plateau, Atlantic, Mono, Couffo, and Zou Districts.
Livestock is an important component of agricultural production, contributing about 6% of GDP from the husbandry of cattle, goats and sheep, pigs, poultry, grasscutters (greater cane rats), and snails.
Capture fisheries (sea and fresh water) production provides work for 70,000 people and produces 2% of GDP, reaching an estimated high of 40,000 tons harvested in 2005.
The largest plots of farmland are found in Borgou, followed by Atacora, Collines, Alibori, Donga, Plateau, Ouémé, Atlantique, Mono, and Couffo in that order.
The leading departments with the highest percentage of households engaged in crops or gardens for food production and income are as follows: Atacora 80%, Alibori 70%, Donga 60%, Collines 54%, Borgou 53%, Couffo 44%, Plateau 40%, and Zou 37%.
[1] A report undertaken by the Council of Private Investors in Benin in 2007 divided the country into eight agricultural zones in regards to crop cultivation and animal husbandry practices.
The zones, working from the north to the south, are as follows:[1] Cattle, goats and sheep are the primary animals raised in Benin, most found on the northern grasslands.
More than 85% of this is shipped to Benin for onward sales into Nigeria—entering the Nigerian market through informal cross-border trading activities (as do rice, intermediate and consumer-oriented food, and agricultural products of all type).
[1] Vegetable production includes tomato, pepper, onion, okra across the country; and cabbage, carrot, lettuce, and cucumber growing in specific areas suitable for this type of crop.
[1] According to INRAB, the best fruit species in Benin are mango, papaya, banana, orange, avocado, guava, and pineapple, considering cost and income intensity, profitability and investment comparison, and financial competitiveness.
Fish, meats, staple starch crops, legumes, soy and milk cheeses, fruits, and vegetables are available in the market every week of the year in most places with significant variations in the quantity supplied.
The long marketing channel of vegetables in the larger peri-urban and urban areas involves several types of intermediaries, from local traders to wholesalers.
