Michael Kirk (1996):
The Role of Land Tenure and Property Rights in Sustainable Resource Use: The Case of Benin

4.4. The former State farms and cooperatives

The politically explosive problem of former State farms and cooperatives may require its own treatment. The significance of their numbers is hard to assess: data about surface are incomplete and contradictory and possibly only partially published. Especially in the southern provinces with high population density, in particular Ouémé, they take up a significant share of arable areas. Some impressions confirm the general picture that these units are currently in a pitiful state (Gräbner 1992):

A State farm in the region of Savalou showed a large area of cleared former fields which had been worked with heavy equipment in monoculture. After closing up the fields at the end of the 80s, the land lay fallow. Trees have so far scarcely grown back and the quality of the soil according the statements of the neighbours is very poor and the weed infestation is enormous.

Oil palm plantations in the area of Sékou are too old to be productive, are no longer taken care of and are infested with weeds. The fertility of the soil is estimated as slight. Currently, in an area with great pressure on the soil, they depict an 'island' of slight utilization intensity, however it is only a matter of time before the land will be used by the villagers in one form or another.

With that they depict a growing challenge to and also offer chances for new agricultural methods which care for resources. However, the prerequisite for sustainable resource management is without doubt the solution of the question of property relations. At the same time, Benin is only one of many cases in West Africa where new forms of property rights for former state farms are being reconciled with new cultivation models.