Achieving food security in a changing climate is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century. For subsistence-oriented farming families who experience firsthand pressures on their food system - population growth, environmental degradation and climate change, to name only a few - adaptation has become an urgent necessity. The ability to 'adapt and benefit' through a suite of climate change adaptation interventions that build adaptive capacity is touted by many humanitarian and development institutions as integral to food security today. However, adapting and benefiting is often a far reach for many smallholder farming families, who more commonly manage multiple interdependent stressors through a mix of adaptive actions and negative coping strategies. The relative benefit of this mix of adaptive and coping strategies is socially differentiated, varying by location and both between and within households. This combination of strategies, or the variety of options to enact livelihood outcomes, is framed as a response space. This thesis explores the impact of social differentiation on the adaptive capacity of subsistence-oriented farming families experiencing food insecurity and environmental change. Using a case study of two villages in the Upper West region of Ghana, it investigates how adaptive capacity and response spaces differ based on points of social differentiation; the drivers that limit or exacerbate adaptive capacity and response spaces; and the implications of these responses for humanitarian, development, and government programmes that aim to support these populations. These questions are approached using mixed methods (embedded direct observation, the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index household and individual survey, participatory action research exercises, child growth and hospital admissions records, focus groups, and key informant interviews) and a unique conceptual framework which draws heavily from systems thinking, feminist research theory, Sen's capabilities approach and grounded theory. I followed context-specific local drivers to deeply examine the familial and cultural political lives of households to better understand the interdependent nature of empowerment within the household, the distribution of scarce food, control over livelihoods and income, the management of poverty-induced stress, and the risk these drivers pose to public health. Out of this research, a multi-level vulnerability landscape surfaced, characterized by a food system on the margins and unequal adaptation within the case study population. The research led to the following insights: farmers experience multiple disadvantages being located in the Upper West of Ghana as compared to southern regions, and are underserved by multiple governmental and NGO institutions; farmers in turn experience heterogeneous vulnerability and access to response spaces at the community level, which are deeply entrenched in social norms that favour adult male bodies, male spaces, and male-typical productive roles; and, at the same time, there are individuals and families that stand outside these trends and are able to adapt and benefit, which highlights the need for an intersectional approach when examining the household and sub-household context. The 2015 Sustainable Development Goals include a pledge to ‘leave no one behind' in the pursuit to 'free the human race from the tyranny of poverty and want and to heal and secure our planet'. Understanding the differing vulnerability of subsistence-oriented smallholder farming populations, as well as the ways their response spaces and adaptive capacity have been differently shaped, will be important for the program design and targeting strategies of interventions to achieve this goal. This thesis aims to contribute to this enormous task.

SummaryToday one of the world’s biggest challenges remains the precarious livelihood situation of millions of smallholder farmers. Grounded in new types of traditionally-based technologies and locally available natural and social resources, agroecology seems to be a promising livelihood strategy, above all for African smallholder farmers, many of whom cannot afford expensive technologies and inputs. In fragile environments where entire families depend on small-scale agriculture, as in Eastern Burkina Faso, it is of utmost importance to understand whether agroecology can really improve livelihood outcomes and under what conditions. The present study explores the process of agroecological transitions in a developing cooperation context so as to understand how and why adoptions and adaptations of agroecologically-based development programs impact on farmers’ livelihoods. To encompass the complexity of agroecology in a development intervention context, the study is built on a triple interdisciplinary conceptual framework that combines the sustainable livelihoods approach, the agronomy-based comparative agriculture approach and the development anthropology-based ECRIS approach (Rapid Collective Inquiry for the Identification of Conflicts and Strategic Groups). Thriving from extensive qualitative field research in Gnagna Province, including semi-guided interviews with ninety smallholder farmers and eighteen key personalities as well as participant observation, the research shows the gap between agroecology’s potential in theory and its actual impacts on various farmers’ livelihoods when deployed in a development cooperation context.The study shows that development organisations choose among the manifold interpretations of agroecology and often ignore its transdisciplinary, participatory, bottom-up and action-orientated attributes. Nonetheless, results suggest that the promotion of agroecology-based farming techniques by the local NGO ARFA (“Association pour la Formation et la Recherche en Agro-écologie”) makes sense in the given context of environmental degradation and relatively weak livelihood asset bases of most farmers in the region and that the adoption of these techniques has a positive overall impact on farmers’ livelihoods. A deeper understanding, however, reveals precisely how farmers with the weakest livelihood asset base – manually-tilling, livestock-deprived, labour- and time-constrained, illiterate, and with the poorest household situation in terms of shelter, possession of everyday objects, diet quantity and quality, as well as with the lowest social status and influence – in the end benefit least from ARFA’s programs. Already better-off farmers typically become leader members of ARFA’s farmer groups, that are used as a medium to transfer the promoted agroecological techniques. These techniques are based on indigenous or traditional knowledge gleaned from farmers elsewhere, which means that farmers “targeted” by the program must acquire new knowledge, know-how, as well as equipment and inputs. The study shows that ARFA uses the farmer groups as seemingly neutral diffusion organs, failing to consider structural factors of a social, power and relational nature within the groups. Internal power structures, however, decide which group members have access to the best knowledge input via participation in farmer field schools, as well as access to equipment distributed via the groups. The benefits of belonging to new organisational structures more equally affect all group members, especially in the form of enhanced organisational capacities and new communication and social skills, yet the imbalance between better-off and worse-off farmers remains in force.By adopting a more aggregate perspective the study further demonstrates a new dependency of farmers created by agroecological development programs, that can be interpreted as conflicting with agroecology’s call for farmer autonomy. Furthermore, the feasibility of scaling-up agroecology within the existing transforming structures and processes at different levels is restricted. The results indicate the limitations of the idea of propagating agroecology in developing countries without simultaneously working towards a different global food system. / RésuméAujourd’hui, l’un des plus grands défis du monde est la situation précaire de dizaines de millions de petits agriculteurs. Fondée sur de nouveaux types de technologies traditionnelles et sur des ressources naturelles et sociales disponibles localement, l'agroécologie semble être une stratégie d’existence prometteuse, surtout pour les petits agriculteurs africains, dont beaucoup ne peuvent pas accéder à des techniques et à des intrants coûteux. Dans les environnements fragiles où des familles entières dépendent de l'agriculture à petite échelle, comme dans l'est du Burkina Faso, il est très important de comprendre si l'agroécologie peut réellement améliorer les moyens d’existence des ménages agricoles et dans quelles conditions. La présente thèse explore le processus de transition agroécologique dans un contexte de coopération au développement, afin de comprendre comment et pourquoi les adoptions et les adaptations d’innovations basées sur l’agroécologie ont un impact sur les moyens de subsistance des agriculteurs. Afin d’appréhender la complexité de l’agroécologie dans un contexte d’interventions de développement, l’étude est fondée sur un triple cadre conceptuel interdisciplinaire qui combine l'approche des moyens d'existence durables, l'approche agronomique de l’Agriculture Comparée et l’approche ECRIS (Enquête Collective Rapide d’Identification des Conflits et des Groupes Stratégiques) issue de l'anthropologie du développement. S'appuyant sur des recherches de terrain qualitatives approfondies dans la province de la Gnagna, incluant des entretiens semi-directifs avec quatre-vingt-dix agriculteurs et dix-huit acteurs-clés ainsi que de l’observation participante, la recherche montre l'écart entre le potentiel théorique de l'agroécologie et ses impacts réels sur les moyens de subsistance de diverses catégories d’agriculteurs.La thèse montre que les organisations de développement choisissent parmi les nombreuses interprétations de l'agroécologie, et ignorent souvent ses attributs de transdisciplinarité, de participation, de démarche ascendante et d’orientation vers l'action. Néanmoins, les résultats suggèrent que la promotion par l'ONG locale ARFA (Association pour la Recherche et la Formation en Agro-écologie) de techniques agricoles basées sur l'agroécologie a du sens dans le contexte régional de dégradation de l'environnement, et de moyens d’existence relativement faibles, de la plupart des agriculteurs :de manière générale, l'adoption de ces techniques a un impact positif sur les moyens d’existence des agriculteurs. Une analyse plus approfondie révèle toutefois comment les agriculteurs disposant des moyens d’existence les plus faibles – labour manuel, pas d’animaux, peu de force de travail, illettrés et vivant dans les ménages les plus démunis en termes d’habitation, de possession d’objets de consommation courante, de régime alimentaire en quantité et en qualité, ayant aussi un statut social bas et une faible influence – bénéficient le moins des programmes d’ARFA en fin de compte. Les agriculteurs un peu plus aisés constituent les membres principaux des groupements d’agriculteurs d’ARFA, qui servent de moyen pour diffuser les techniques agroécologiques promues. Ces techniques sont basées sur des connaissances traditionnelles d’agriculteurs d’autres régions ou pays, ce qui signifie que les agriculteurs « ciblés » par les programmes doivent acquérir de nouvelles connaissances, ainsi que du matériel et des intrants. L'étude montre qu’ARFA utilise les groupements d'agriculteurs comme des organes de diffusion apparemment neutres, sans prendre en compte les hiérarchies sociales et les relations de pouvoir structurelles au sein des groupements. Pourtant, les structures de pouvoir internes aux groupements décident quels membres ont accès au meilleur apport de connaissances par le biais de la participation à des champs écoles paysans, ainsi qu’au matériel distribué via les groupements. Les avantages liés à l’appartenance à de nouvelles structures organisationnelles - notamment sous la forme de capacités d’organisation renforcées, de nouvelles compétences sociales et en matière de communication - sont plus équitablement répartis. Mais, le déséquilibre entre les agriculteurs un peu plus aisés et les moins nantis demeure.En adoptant une perspective plus globale, l’étude démontre une nouvelle dépendance des agriculteurs induite par les programmes de développement agroécologique. Cette dépendance peut être considérée comme allant à l’encontre de l’appel de l’agroécologie à l’autonomie des agriculteurs. En outre, le passage de l’agroécologie à une échelle supérieure est réduit. Les résultats indiquent les limites de l'idée de propager de l'agroécologie dans les pays en développement sans une transition simultanée vers un système alimentaire mondial différent. / Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished