Burkina Faso has few natural resources and a weak industrial base. Approximately 90 percent of the population is engaged in subsistence agriculture. Food insecurity is commonplace in many parts of the country.1 During the 1960s, Burkina Faso’s rainfall averaged 700 mm/year. Along with other countries in West Africa’s Sahel, the country was hit by a series of droughts in the 1970s and 1980s. Between 1982 and 1986, rainfall was reduced by nearly 50 percent to an average of only 381 mm/year.2 The northern part of the Central Plateau was particularly hard-hit. By the early 1980s, the region was characterized by falling ground-water levels, low and declining cereal yields, expanding cultivation onto poor quality agriculture lands, loss of natural vegetative cover, high rates of soil erosion and significant human migration from rural villages. This water crisis significantly affected women, who had to walk approximately eight kilometers each day to collect water. Farm families were devastated. A study by the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) found that between 1981 and 1986, sorghum and millet yields averaged only 293 and 232 kg per hectare (ha), respectively; previous averages were between 400- 600 kg/ha. In the village of Oualaga, 14 out of 18 (78 percent) households experienced repeated food deficits. By the time the droughts occurred, much of the major forests had already been cut down, leaving only perennial shrubs and marginal land for cultivation. The drive to expand agriculture for increased food production destroyed native vegetation and accelerated soil erosion. These difficult conditions compelled many farm families to relocate to urban centers or other rural areas with higher annual rainfall. In five of the twelve villages studied by ICRISAT, the population declines between 1975 and 1985 were attributed to out-migration. Many women, already burdened by water and firewood collection duties, were left by husbands seeking paid work in other areas