Suitability Analysis of Rice Cropping in Burkina Faso: Assessing the Gap between Current and Potential Rice Cropping Area

Abstract

The challenges of climate change in West Africa are closely linked to food security in the region. Rising temperatures and increasingly variable rainfall threaten traditional rain-fed agriculture based on the rainy season. Climate change is affecting the rainy season in West Africa by shifting the onset, shortening the growing period and the rainy season are increasingly interrupted by dry spells. An increase of extreme weather events such as heavy precipitation or storms add another risk to agriculture. The risk of crop failures hits an already vulnerable food system since a large portion of food is imported what makes the West African countries vulnerable against external economic shocks. Furthermore, West Africa has one of the highest population growths and will be triple by 2050 to 1.5 billion people. For a sufficient food supply and to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals an intensification of the agricultural area is needed and adaption strategies against the negative effects of climate change are in demand. Especially in the growing cities in West Africa a change in dietary leads to a swift from traditional staples crops like yam or sorghum to e.g. rice. To decrease the dependency from rice imports West African countries are expanding the domestic production of rice. A West African geomorphological specificity allows rice cropping in inland valleys and flood plains, characterized by soils with a high water capacity, highly suitable for rice cropping. These inland valleys are partially used for agricultural practices but there is still an unexploited potential. To quantify the potentially suitable area in for rice cropping and to map the already used area for rice cropping Burkina Faso, this study is combining different dataset. On the one hand SRTM data are used to derive inland valleys and on the other hand Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 time series are used to map the already used area for rice cropping. Since agriculture practices always depend on climatic conditions ERA5 data are analyzed regarding the suitability for rice cropping in Burkina Faso depending on the need of rice in different growing stages. The combination of the rice mapping and the potential suitability for rice cropping can be used as decision support for local stakeholders to improve the planning of future expansion of rice area.