Spodoptera frugiperda has caused significant losses of farmer income in sub-Saharan countries since 2016. This study assessed farmers’ knowledge of S. frugiperda, their perceptions and management practices in Benin. Data were collected through a national survey of 1237 maize farmers. Ninety-one point eight percent of farmers recognized S. frugiperda damage, 78.9% of them were able to identify its larvae, and 93.9% of the maize fields were infested. According to farmers, the perceived yield losses amounted to 797.2 kg/ha of maize, representing 49% of the average maize yield commonly obtained by farmers. Chi-square tests revealed that the severity of the pest attacks was significantly associated with cropping practices and types of grown maize varieties. About 16% of farmers identified francolin (Francolinus bicalcaratus), village weaver (Ploceus cucullatus), and common wasp (Vespula vulgaris) as natural enemies and 5% of them identified yellow nutsedge, chan, shea tree, neem, tamarind, and soybean as repellent plants of S. frugiperda. Most farmers (91.4%) used synthetic pesticides and 1.9% of them used botanical pesticides, which they found more effective than synthetic pesticides. Significant relationships exist between farmers’ management practices, their knowledge, organization membership, and contact with research and extension services. More research is required to further understand the effectiveness of botanical pesticides made by farmers against S. frugiperda and to refine them for scaling-up.

West Africa is facing the challenge of its population’s food insecurity in a context of accelerated degradation of natural resources. In order to efficiently face this double bottleneck, agroecological interventions were implemented as a way to promote best agricultural practices. Agroecology is a mode of production that nowadays questions our food system which, despite technological progress, still struggles to feed the world’s population. This systematic review is part of the vision of a deep agroecology and aims at analyzing the institutional, political, organizational, and social obstacles and levers for an agroecological transition and its amplification in Burkina Faso and Benin. For this purpose, a structured literature review was conducted using grey and published literature. It appears that despite the mitigated results of the implementation of the Green Revolution model of agricultural production in West Africa, African public authorities seem to have placed once again their faith in conventional production practices to respond to the challenges facing agriculture in the region. This situation goes beyond the regional framework to take root at the national level, (e.g., Burkina Faso, Benin), with the corollary of an apparent lack of institutional interest in sustainable modes of production. However, there is a network of stakeholders who are developing promising initiatives for scaling up agroecological practices.

In the context of Africa’s farm labor scarcity, the use of mechanization is crucial for agricultural development. In Benin, technological advances, such as animal traction and motorization, are struggling to achieve the success expected by producers. The objective of this research was to analyze the drivers of mechanization in cotton production in Benin. Data collected from 482 cotton producers in three agroecological zones of the country were analyzed using a multinomial Logit model. The results revealed that 34% of cotton producers used hand tools, compared to 31% using draught animals and 35% using tractors. Variables such as education level, area cropped, access to land, access to credit and agroecological zone had a positive influence on the probability of using mechanization in the cotton production. Family labor size per household had a negative influence on the probability of using farm mechanization. Women were more likely to use farm mechanization than men. This research suggests that mechanization policies should adapt agricultural equipment to the specificities of the production systems of each agroecological zone, and strengthen land tenure security and access to credit, particularly for women cotton producers.

The impact of anthropogenic activities on the spatiotemporal dynamics of the forest of Dogo-Kétou has been studied in relation to climate change observed in southeastern Benin. Especially, this study has detected the changes in climate parameters in southeast Benin from 1954 to 2016 and in forestland use from 1986 to 2018. A climatic break was detected, and the annual and monthly rainfall and temperature averages, the rainfall indexes, the concentration of precipitation, the number of rainy days according to the World Meteorological Organization and the bioclimatic aridity indexes were assessed. A GIS analysis was also performed based on Landsat images from 1986, 2000 and 2018 to detect the dynamic of land use and land cover of the classified forest of Dogo-Kétou. Excel 2016, R_{x64 4.1.2}, Rclimdex₃₀₁, Khronostat_1.01 and ArcGIS were used. The rainfall series showed a break in 1969. The segment from 1954 to 1968 was a period of excess rainfall with an average of 1420.46 mm/year. The segment from 1969 to 2016 was a rainfall deficit period with a reduction of 12 to 37% of rainy days and an increase of dry days for 21.4 days/year. In this last segment, southeast Benin experienced trends of its climate towards a sub-arid and arid climate. The agglomerations and bare soil of the forest of Dogo-Kétou increased to an area almost double the size between 1986 and 2018. The tree and shrub savannas gained in space from 12.1% in 2000 to 38.9% in 2018 and the dense forest and wooded savannas regressed by 52.6% in 1986 to 36.1% in 2000 then to 4.3% of the forest area in 2018. The subequatorial climate of southeastern Benin is gradually evolving towards a dry climate. The dense forest in this area is also gradually disappearing, giving way to savannas. This transformation towards the savannas was due to anthropogenic actions whose effects were strongly accentuated by climate change in this part of Benin and West Africa.

Urban gardening offers a viable option to improve diet diversity for the urban poor. Yet, its success rate is particularly dependent on the managerial capacities of urban gardeners to coordinate and organize collective actions for the successful exploitation of the gardens. The calls from governments to organize cooperative structures among farmers seem justified and merits a high priority on agricultural policy agendas. Although principles of cooperative structures exist, there is no blueprint available that indicates how to start a gardeners’ cooperation. Moreover, these collaborations need to ally with and build on existing social structures of the urban gardeners involved. Our research can contribute to this alignment process by exploring and comparing international standards of prevailing organizations and their functioning among 261 gardeners in two cities in Benin. We found that a vast majority of urban gardeners are members of a cooperation. Nevertheless, their membership is largely titular because gardeners mostly behave semi-autonomously and few decisions are taken collectively. The obvious economic advantages of leveraging bargaining power, reducing transaction costs, and increasing possibilities for loans are seriously underutilized. We suggest that capacity building can help to develop cooperation among urban gardeners to reach their full potential which, congruently, should also improve the livelihoods of the urban poor.

In the context of rapid urbanization, poorer residents in cities across low- and middle-income countries increasingly experience food and nutrition deficiencies. The United Nations has highlighted urban agriculture (UA) as a viable solution to food insecurity, by empowering the urban poor to produce their own fresh foods and make some profit from surplus production. Despite its potential role in reducing poverty and food insecurity, there appears to be little political will to support urban agriculture. This is seen in unclear political mandates that are sustained by information gaps on selection criteria for UA sites. The research reported here addresses this issue in the form of a decision-making support tool that assesses the suitability of cadastral units and informal plots for allotment gardens in urban and peri-urban areas. The tool was developed and tested for three rapidly expanding cities in Benin, a low-income country in West Africa, based on an ordered logit model that relates a set of 300 expert assessments on site suitability to georeferenced information on biophysical and socio-economic characteristics. Soil, land use, groundwater depth, vicinity to market and women’s safety were significant factors in the assessment. Scaled up across all cadastral units and informal sites, the tool generated detailed baseline maps on site suitability and availability of areas. Its capacity to support policymakers in selecting appropriate sites comes to the fore by reporting changes in site suitability under scenarios of improved soil fertility and enhanced safety for women.