Toward a dis-aggregated view of crop–livestock integration in Western Africa

This paper presents a framework for conceptualising crop–livestock integration along four dimensions: space, time, management and ownership. The framework highlights the fact that benefits from crop–livestock interactions can be gained by integration along one, some or all of these dimensions, although the space dimension is particularly important. The implications of four factors—the ‘sustainability imperative’; the human, livestock density relationship; the ‘livestock revolution’; and large-scale tsetse clearance—are then explored in relation to the claim that greater crop–livestock integration should be the basis of agricultural development in West Africa. The conclusion of this analysis is that greater crop–livestock integration is likely to be of interest primarily in ‘middle’ countryside areas with relatively good natural resources.