ABSTRACT
In the short term, as our focus on flexibility and adaptability has underlined, smallholders in the Sahel are confronted by frequent changes in their resource endowments, some of them in variables over which they can exercise some control, but most of them not so. At any point in time, a man or woman is poised, as it were, before the shifting colours of a kaleidoscope, but only for a moment, before the picture changes. His or her decisions can affect the way it will change.
