| | Senegal's New Agricultural Policy (NAP) has been an important part of the structural adjustment measures recommended to this country by the World Bank (SALs II (1986), III (1987) and IV (1990) and supported by other donors including the French Caisse Centrale de Coopération Economique (now called Caisse française de développment), USAID and the European Development Fund. The object of the NAP has been to reverse the trends of stagnation and decline which have characterised Senegalese agriculture since the end of the 1960s. The first part of this article analyses the various aspects of the constraints which have inhibited Senegalese agriculture over the last decade and which the NAP was set out to address: the worsening of climatic conditions, land saturation and soil degradation, decline of rural monetary incomes per capita; rising operating costs in various agricultural sectors; declining real world prices for the major export crops (peanut and cotton). The article then presents the main components of the NAP and the results of these policies. Even if some progress has been accomplished, the overall picture remains bleak. Due to the persistence of the above constraints - declining world prices for export crops, low rice consumer prices, high operating costs - producer prices and rural incomes remain too low in order for peasants to invest in fertilisers, equipment or soil regeneration. In this context, the withdrawal of the State from the agricultural sector has reinforced the trend toward disinvestment. Overall growth in rural production remains inferior to that of the rural population and food imports continue to grow. Beyond the complexity of specific causes, three macro-economic or macro-social elements contribute to explain the relative failure of the NAP: the constraints on public finances, partly due to the weight of public debt; the internal resistance to any change in the mode of socio-political regulation which is made possible by the selective control over the revenues generated by the agricultural sectors; overly optimistic expectations concerning the results which can be brought about by market forces in the specific context of Senegalese agriculture. |
