ENDOGENOUS PERCEPTIONS AND MEASURES FOR AGROPASTORALISTS’ ADAPTATION IN THE SAHELIAN AREA OF BURKINA FASO

The study was conducted to understand the perceptions and local adaptation strategies of rural sahelian communities in Burkina Faso to climate change on ruminant rearing practices. For this purpose, the study was carried out in the rural commune of Bani by collecting primary from semistructured interviews with 143 producers and secondary data of temperature, rainfall and their spatial and temporal evolution from 2005 to 2016. Analysis of these data reveals that 67.13% of the producers are male and 32.86% female, with an average age of 55 ± 0.3 years. These respondents were agropastoralists with an average of 3.5 ha of cultivated land, using traditional seeds (100% of respondents) and improved seeds (58.7%) and rearing local breeds of ruminants. For climate change, respondents notified an increase in temperature and a decrease in rainfall that corroborates the analysis of the meteorological data collected. The consequences of climate change on livestock farmers' resources are food insecurity, lack of pasture, drought and low animal productivity. The local adaptation strategies applied by livestock farmers are the diversification of agro-sylvo-pastoral production (88.11%) and income-generating activities (70%). In the study area, diversification is the strategy adopted by agro-pastoralists to ensure food security and provide income to meet the daily needs of families