Cropping Practices and Their Drivers in Various Cropping Systems in Peri-urban Areas of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

The advantages of urban and peri-urban agriculture in West African cities, namely its contribution to food production, income generation and resorbing unemployment are well reported. In the peri-urban areas, cropping systems and practices are various and may affect differently soil properties. Those systems and practices may be driven by farms socio-economic conditions. Here we conducted a study in 133 peri-urban farms located at the vicinity of the city of Ouagadougou. Farmers were questioned on their cropping practices and soil samples were taken and analyzed for their total organic C, available P and K contents. Principal component analysis allowed to study the variability of the farms considering cropping systems, the cropping practices and the farms socio-economic conditions. We found that in the studied cropping systems up to 60% of the farms variability was explained. Monoculture led to low soil organic carbon while polyculture led to low soil available K. The studied socio-economic conditions of the farms explained up to 60% of the variability in cropping practices.