Burkina Faso

General Information

· Main climates: Tropical Steppe & Semiarid; Tropical Wet & Dry

· Total land area: 27 380 000 ha

· Internal renewable water resources: 17.5 km³

· Incoming water flow: - km³

· GNP per capita, 1998: PPP$ 866

· Main food consumed: Millet & sorghum, Maize, Nuts & oil, Oil & fat, Meat

· Rice supply, 1999: 27.7 kg paddy/capita/year

Basic Statistics

Producing Zones and Cropping Seasons

Most of rice is planted in the southwestern region. In other regions rice is planted mainly under irrigation and in small areas. The following table shows the harvested areas from different rice producing zones.

The following table shows the rice cropping seasons.

Production Practices

The following figure shows the harvested areas from different ecologies during the last five years.

Upland rice is grown as a mono-crop or as in a mixture with other food crops following the slash-and-burn shifting cultivation almost without any application of chemical fertilizer and other ago-chemical. The size of lowland rice farms per farmer is generally small (from few hundred to few thousand square meters). Women are dominant rainfed lowland farmers, while men are dominant irrigated rice farmers. In rainfed lowland areas rice-other food crops are practised if water supply is assured, while in irrigated rice areas, double rice cropping is dominant. A number of improved rice varieties have been released for cultivation.

Land preparation for lowland rice is done either manually or with animal traction. Transplanting is the main method of crop establishment. Farmers generally apply little fertilizer to rainfed lowland. However, moderates to high rates of inorganic fertilizers are usually applied to irrigated rice. Information on rice response to fertilizer application, however, is limited. Weeding is generally done manually, although the use of herbicides is increasing in irrigated rice. Farmers do not have adequate appropriate tools and equipment for harvesting and threshing of rice.

Constraints and Issues of Sustainable Production

There are several constraints to sustainable rice production in Burkina Faso. Following are the majors:

• Lack of a well-defined rice policy.

• Drought in upland areas and drought and flash flood in rainfed lowland (or inland swamp) areas due to irregular weather

• Inadequate and irregular input supplies: seeds, fertilizer and credit.

• Lack of small farm equipment especially for post harvest operations.

• Poor maintenance of irrigation facilities.

• Low temperature during off-season in irrigated areas.

• Poor road networks and marketing systems.

• Labor shortage due to competition from other crop.

• Weak research and extension support.

The following table shows the rice production costs.

Sustainable rice production depends greatly on appropriate policy to provide farmers with support in inputs supply and marketing of products. The improvement of water supply and control in rice production is essential.

Research and Development Institutes

• Programme Riz; Institute d'Etudes et de Recherches Agricoles (INERA), Station de Farakoba, B.P. 910, Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso; Tel 982329; Fax 970960

• Direction des intrants agricoles, Service national des semences, B.P. 7028, Ouagadougou,

• Station de Farako-Bâ, 01 BP 910, Bobo Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, Tel: (226) 98 23 29, Fax: (226) 97 09 60, E-mail: [email protected]

• Direction des Productions et Végétales, Ministère de l’Agriculture, 01 BP 1764, Ouagadougou 01,

• Direction de la Vulgarisation Agricole; 07 BP 7028, Ouagadougou 07, Tel.: (226) 307091, Fax: (226) 311826