Publications

Farming activities are the primary source of livelihood for agro-pastoral communities in the Sahel biogeographic zone in Burkina Faso. The climate variability and change have a direct impact on performance, quantity, and quality of staple cereals yields. Understanding how the crops respond to climate variability is crucial for ensuring adequate crops management and food security. Hence, this paper aims at investigating how different staple cereals respond to certain indicators of climate variability at inter-annual and inter-decadal levels in southern Burkina Faso. In our study, we use regression models and scatter plots. The model results show that climate variability has mixed effects on cereal yields. The study demonstrates the interdependencies among district-scale cereal yields in the study area including maize, sorghum, and millet casually associate with the inter-annual variation of selected climate variability indicators. Maize yields, for example, relate strongly to the rainfall amount variation (R2 = 51.8%) showing high moisture dependence during critical growth stages. Conclusions emphasize the adoption of efficient water conservation and utilization platforms, especially those that have evidently increased yields and strengthening of forecasts dissemination and related climate information services.