Cropping systems in west africa: an attempt to assess the agroecological sustainability of korsimoro in Burkina Faso

The industrial revolution has profoundly changed the habits and life of the human race in West Africa. It is characterised by the use of more efficient equipment in various areas of activity such as agriculture, livestock farming, industry and trade. This has contributed to the overall metamorphosis of agriculture, which is the main primary sector activity of rural populations. The aim of this article is to assess the sustainability of the cropping systems developed in the hydro-agricultural perimeter of the rural commune of Korsimoro on the scale of agro-ecological sustainability. The Indicateurs de Durabilité des Exploitations Agricoles (IDEA, 2008) method forms the backbone of this study. The hypothesis of this research is that the cropping systems practised in the Korsimoro hydro-agricultural perimeter are not in line with development standards.The target sample consisted of one hundred and four (104) people, 33.53% of whom were farmers, 66.47% of whom were women farmers and two (02) people from the agricultural department. The research results showed that 56.73% of producers have a sustainability score that does not exceed 25% of the maximum potential. The cropping systems practised in Korsimoro achieved a total score of 45/100 points. This represents an average of 15% of the maximum potential. Its coefficient of variation is 0.25. This is relatively low. The minimum observation offers a negative score (-4) with regard to the descriptive characteristics of the components.