This initiative secures the future of agriculture by fixing the land and the optimal conservation of rainwater and soil. Thus, producers have a sustainable productive land.

Bocage is a technique for integrating environmental conservation into rainfed agriculture in the Sahel.

The bocage is defined as a rural landscape of meadows and/or fields surrounded by hedges and woods. It is a balanced environment created by humans where trees, crops and livestock are combined and where humans and nature live in harmony. In the Sahel, the primary purpose of the bocage is to keep rainwater where it falls by building bunds, ponds and hedges to mitigate the erosive action of monsoon waters and to maintain the biodiversity of an extremely fragile environment. The perimeter bocage (wégoubri) is a land consolidation, at the request of the owners of a site who join together in a land grouping in order to fix the parcel of land and bring environmental improvements.

Through a holistic approach to the problem, a pilot farm integrates the safeguarding of the environment into Sahelian agriculture through three lines of work: applied research, training and direct support to farmers. The concept is based on the creation of jointly owned bocage areas, comprising individual plots and common areas whose management is organized around a land grouping of beneficiaries. The result is a totally restored environment where agriculture is no longer synonymous with erosion, where livestock farming is no longer synonymous with overgrazing, and where trees and shrubs are harmoniously integrated into the environment.

This factsheet is produced within the framework of the Avaclim project, which aims to create the necessary conditions for the deployment of agroecology in drylands. The international solidarity association CARI coordinates the Avaclim project while the Association for Research and Training in Agroecology (ARFA) carries out the implementation in Burkina Faso.