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Agriculture in Senegal

Economic sector in Senegal

  • 24 min read
  • 5 chapters

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Through Irrigation, Millet and Rice

LabImprovement in Food Resources

Senegal is a net food importer, particularly for rice, which represents almost 75% of cereal imports. Peanuts, sugarcane, and cotton are important cash crops, and a wide variety of fruits and vegetables are grown for local and export markets. In 2006, gum arabic exports soared to $280 million, making it by far the leading agricultural export. Green beans, industrial tomato, cherry tomato, melon, and mango are Senegal's main vegetable cash crops. The Casamance region, isolated from the rest of Senegal by Gambia, is an important agricultural producing area, but without the infrastructure or transportation links to improve its capacity.

Despite the lack of modernization of artisanal fishing, the fishing sector remains Senegal's main economic resource and major foreign exchange earner. The livestock and poultry sectors are relatively underdeveloped and have potential for modernization, development and growth. Senegal imports most of its milk and dairy products. The sector is inhibited due to low output and limited investments. The potential production of fauna and forest products is high and diversified, and could, if well organized, benefit poor farmers in rural areas. Although the agricultural sector was impacted by a locust invasion in 2004, it has recovered and gross agricultural production is expected to increase by 6.1% in 2006 and 5.1% in 2007.

Islam and Agriculture in Senegal

Agriculture has long been an important aspect of economic and social life in the Senegambian region. Since the nineteenth century, agricultural production has been closely associated with the growth of Islamic forms of organisation, in particular the Mouride order. While it is not precisely known when Islam initially arrived in the region, it was not until the seventeenth century that Islamic styles of organisation were able to increasingly influence agriculture and other spheres of Senegalese society (Linares 1992). In the nineteenth century, Islam became increasingly prevalent across the country, largely due to the work of Cheikh Amadou Bamba Mbacke (1853-1927), the founder of the Mourridiyya, which to this day remains one of the most popular and economically influential Sufi orders of Senegal. The influential prophet established various marabout republics whose teachings were organised in agricultural daaras (sg. daara). In these community spaces, followers of Bamba would support one another through the income of agricultural labour. The discipline of labour in conjunction with a religiously inspired work ethic was the integral tenet of the formation, which came to foster these intensely community-oriented agricultural spaces. These were spaces of open community and certainty throughout political upheaval, guerrilla warfare and anti-colonial and anti-monarchical struggles. The centrality of the importance of education, agriculture and spirituality made them spaces largely open to all castes, ethnicities, and classes.

Colonial French policies combatting economic uncertainty in the late 19th century advocated the development of peanut cultivation as a cash crop. Peanut, a widely useful resource for its culinary as well as oil-based purposes, initially expanded in a distinct area of West-Central Senegal. Later, these initial policies led to a further two waves of peanut expansion in 1910 and 1940. The 1910 growth of the peanut basin is widely attributed to a greater proximity of relations between Amadou Bamba Mbakke and the French colonial administration. Initially suspicious of one another, the French realised that Shaykh Bamba posed little political threat and was more interested in the religious and spiritual development of the people. The French began to collaborate with Mouride leadership, enlisting their widespread popular support to expand the workforce of the speculative peanut investment markets and production. The colonial administration encouraged the territorial expansion of the Mouride brotherhoods, the state allowing favourable access to forested areas. The daaras, pioneer agricultural-spiritual groups, were encouraged to spread throughout the Terres Neuves, clearing forest and engaging in the French mono-cropping agricultural policy. The Islamisation of Senegal thus went alongside the French colonial agricultural policies, where peanut prices were dependent on an uncertain global market.

The expansion was, however, diverse in its impacts across the country. Wolof groups' expansion, deeply connected to teachings of the Mouride brotherhood, in the North-Western stretches of the Terres Neuves corridor, has been demonstrative of some of the most aggressive and destructive agricultural practises seen in Senegal, where production was done with an almost exclusively short-term economic prioritisation of agriculture, with little consideration of wider environmental impacts. Other expansions by Serer groups were shown to be significantly more tuned to the needs of soil nutrients and encouraged a style of agriculture which was significantly more capable at supporting and sustaining the land on a long-term basis. While Jola peanut production only showed a connection to the Islamic religious organization in more contemporary times.

Contemporary agricultural practises continue to be influenced by Islamic beliefs and practises. For example, in Touba, the burial site of Shaykh Amadou Bamba, which continues to emerge as a growing centre of Senegalese Islamic pilgrimage, surrounding agricultural practises work to facilitate and encourage pilgrimage.

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