Impact of Non-agricultural Activities on Farmers’ Income: Evidence from the Senegalese Groundnut Area

Abstract

Due to the ongoing degradation of climate factors and the variation in agricultural prices, farmers who are most of the time poor, have to look for other means to completement their agricultural income or to replace them. They are smallholders and they sell their harvest to more prosperous farmers. By engaging in non-agricultural activities, they diversify their source of income. A hypothesis that non-agricultural revenue has a positive influence on farmers’ total revenue in the groundnut producing area of Senegal was formulated. The hypothesis has been confirmed with the usage of multinomial logit model, which means that each farmer must get involved in at least a non-agricultural activity and then face low financial and climatic risks. Revenues from these non-agricultural activities may allow these farmers to finance at least one part of their farming and not to rely much on the government.