Essai sur la Contribution de Paul Richards a la Comprehension de l'Agribulture Paysanne en Afrique

Abstract

Paul Richards, from agrarian populism approach, shows successfully in his books, Indigenous Agricultural Revolution. Ecology and Food Production in West Africa, that African small-scale farmers, even poor and scattered, are ecologically inventive and skillful in their environment. For this author, the most effective and rapid rates of agricultural change will occur when state resources are used to back changes that small-scale farmers are already keen to make. Then, agricultural research must lay especial emphasis on the ways in which farmers explore their environment, invent new techniques, and figure out innovative approaches to both familiar and unprecedent problems. Local inventiveness is a resource that might be better integrated, and not replaced, into the wider development process. Below we'll shortly summarize P. Richards main ideas and arguments and give our opinion in the commentary.