A qualitative typology of farmer practices in agroforestry parklands of Sudano-Sahelian West Africa

Traditional agroforestry parklands are anthropogenic agro-ecosystems in which farmers grow cereal crops in fields that are interspersed with a number of important multipurpose indigenous tree species. These farmed parklands of semi-arid savannah regions in sub-Saharan Africa exemplify complex social-ecological systems currently threatened by environmental, climate, and social change. Parklands are found in the Sudano-Sahelian ecological and climate zone, which is below the Sahara Desert and above the humid tropical regions of sub-Saharan Africa. The zone traverses more than 15 countries that consequently share a similar ecology, climate, and agroecology. The population of this eco-climate zone may exceed 100 million people most of whom practice small-scale, rain-fed agriculture and are vulnerable to food-insecurity.; This research focuses on farmers' knowledge and management of soil fertility and vegetation in Butyrospermum parkii and Cordyla pinnata dominated parklands in the Sudano-Sahelian region of Mali. I investigate local soil and tree knowledge, as well as the types of household decision-making and agriculture that farmers of MalinkE ethnicity practice in local parklands. I conceptualize farmers' environmental knowledge, natural resource decision-making, and agriculture as interlinked social-ecological practices that are variable and adjustable responses to environmental and socioeconomic contingencies.; I use data collected from a series of semi-structured interviews that I administered to 78 farmers in four villages, to construct an empirically based typology of farmers' practice of agroecological knowledge, decision-making, and agriculture in agroforestry parklands. This practitioner typology identifies a specific type of farmer who potentially has the highest capacity for managing parkland soil and tree resources in an ecologically sustainable manner while negotiating livelihood choices, socioeconomic contingencies, and environmental challenges. Such a farmer typically engages in the following set of interdependent practices: (1) environmental knowledge practices that are aware of the myriad multidimensional relationships among both biotic and abiotic components of parkland systems; (2) agricultural practices that adaptively combine aspects of both intensive and extensive agriculture depending on the interplay of environmental and socioeconomic factors; and (3) natural resource decision-making that explicitly includes the environmental knowledge and livelihood strategies of female household members.