Vegetable Farming and Poverty Alleviation in Senegal: Crops Socioeconomic Spatial Dynamics the Rural Community of Ndiob (Fatick, Senegal)

For decades, Senegal's cash crop economy has been marked by a crisis that now appears irreversible. The widespread decline in cash crop production (peanuts and cotton), resulting from both political and agro-ecological factors, is the primary cause of the economic difficulties faced by the populations of the peanut-growing region. To overcome these difficulties and survive in their homeland, the people of the rural community of Ndiob (in the peanut-growing region) are adopting vegetable farming as a key strategy. By generating monetary income, stimulating new economic activities, and improving the social living environment (in areas such as food security, health, education, housing, etc.), vegetable farming plays an important role in people's lives. Its spatial impact is reflected in the proliferation of small vegetable plots in fields once devoted to rain-fed agriculture, the transformation of the vegetation landscape, and, above all, new spatial patterns marked by daily flows of vegetable farmers heading toward the valley.