(Oblomov sleeps right through the agricultural chapter.)

The economy of Benin is based almost exclusively on agriculture, most of it food production for the local markets. Benin is, however, among the world’s 20 biggest cotton producers, and cotton exports account for some 35% of fiscal revenues. Of course, there is also a significant national cloth production.
Food production is small scale. As works are still conducted manually, fields are tiny.
Although the government has provided some machines recently, practically all fieldwork is conducted using the traditional hoe in backbreaking hard labour.
The most important crops are maize, manioc, yams, beans, tomatoes, bananas, oranges, mangoes, ananas, cashew nuts, and karité nuts. Rice is usually imported from Thailand, onions from Niger.
The fields, small as they are, often contain a mix of crops. Here maize is planted along with manioc, yams and beans.

In the hilly region of the north, a peasant will clear a strip of land and produce for a couple of years. When the soil is exhausted, he will move on, clear another strip, and wilderness takes over the old field. Some years later, he will come back to the original field. Note the piles of rocks in the abandoned field below.
Yams is a climbing plant forming large tubers, consumed either fried or in the form of meal. Each of the mounds holds a piece of tuber.
Manioc, another tuberous crop, is originally from South America. It is consumed fried, grated and dried (“gari”), or as meal. It can also be processed into starch (“tapioca”), but can theoretically also serve as raw material for bio-ethanol.
Mango trees are some kind of weed. You spit out a kernel, and the next thing you know you have a gigantic tree in your back yard. I found this one right in front of our entrance.
Nearly every house is adorned by a majestic mango tree.
Mangoes ripening on a tree. Mangoes are also eaten by birds and large bats. However, these animals are not regarded as enemies, as the trees are far too large and the upper part usually remains unharvested.

Papaya tree in a back yard.
Similarly to the arable crops, fruit trees are often grown mixed together: Karité trees and mango trees form a dense forest.
Karité nuts are processed by the farm women, and the butter is sold on the local markets. They are heated in these ovens in order to separate the fat.
This is how the karité butter is sold on the markets. It can also be used for cooking, but it seems that it is not very good.
Another important fruit is the cashew apple. The lower part of the fruit is the cashew nut, usually exported, and the red apple is consumed as fruit.
Traditional farmhouses are made from clay and covered and decorated with cement. The local clay is astonishingly resistant and can survive several rainy seasons unprotected without too much damage. Usually several related families live together in an agglomeration of buildings, to which the storage buildings (the round ones) are added.
Cereals storage
There are also freestanding storage facilities
Another typical house form in the north-west of Benin is the famous “tata somba”.
Cattle are raised by the Peul, an ethnic group in the north of Benin, Niger and Burkina Faso. They are held in transhumance, migrating up to Niger and Burkina Faso during the dry season and coming back to Benin for the rainy season from June to September, and then you can meet them grazing between the fruit trees. Often a farmer, who has got some spare money, will buy a cow and give it to a Peul herdsman for keeping and breeding, thus increasing his wealth. The Peul on the other hand gets the right to exploit the milk given by the cows. However, milk production is far below the demand, so large quantities of milk powder are imported in order to make up for the lacking quantity, thus at the same time impeding the development of local milk production.
Recently sometimes the traditional cattle are crossbred with Brazilian varieties in order to increase the yield.
One local delicatessen is the typical cheese produced by the Peul. In fact, most of the locally produced milk is transformed into this cheese, although recently imitations based on imported milk powder or soymilk are sometimes sold on the markets. The milk is agglutinated by plant essences, and the cheese is colored with teak leaves. Usually it is fried (it does not melt) and added to spicy tomato sauce.
Almost everybody raises chicken, and many hold goats. Chicken, fish and beans are the most important protein sources, fish being cheaper than chicken.
The goats are of some local, small and stocky, brand, although sometimes big and bony varieties similar to European goats can be found.

Honey is another renowned West African product.
For those living in Europe, in order to experience the practical side of what has been told and shown above, you are invited to wander through your local quarter of African immigrants and check out what is on sale in their shops.