The role of farmers' networks in sourcing planting material and information in a context of agroforestry transition in Madagascar

CONTEXT: Crop diversity contributes to the resilience of agroecosystems by enhancing their capacity to adapt to perturbations. Farmers' access to crop planting material and information required for their, is crucial as it allows farmers to maintain a high level of crop diversity and adapt their crop portfolio to the changing social-ecological context. Despite their presumed importance for the resilience of small farms, the processes that influence farmers' access to the planting material of new crops and the information associated have rarely been studied. OBJECTIVE: Our aim was to analyze the social networks that Betsimisaraka farmers in Madagascar use to access planting material and associated information. This would advance our understanding of the processes involved in the transformation of these agroecosystems into diversified agroforests that confer more resilience to local farming systems. METHODS: We compare the networks of clove and vanilla, whose cultivation in the area expanded in recent decades, with the network of banana, a traditionally cultivated crop. We conducted an exhaustive survey of 98 households in a village on Madagascar's northeast coast to gather data on the farmers' access to clove, vanilla and banana planting material and information concerning their cultivation. We analyzed the differences and similarities between the three networks, in particular the types of relationship mobilized, the nature of kinship ties, and the geographical extent of networks. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Our results show that the studied networks include both weak bridging ties over long distances that give the farmers access to crops that were rarely cultivated in the area until recently (vanilla), and strong local ties that facilitate farmers' access to crops that are broadly cultivated locally (clove and banana). Major differences were found in the nature of ties used by farmers to access planting material and relevant information for these different crops. The implications of the network characteristics observed for the resilience of the farming systems are discussed. SIGNIFICANCE: Our study underlines the importance of taking local modes of access to crop diversity and associated information into consideration to enhance the development of biodiversity-based resilient agriculture. We recommend that the local social processes that drive this access should be fully integrated in development and adaptation programs.