**1. Introduction**

Land-use changes are consistently the principal driver of habitat change on approximately half of the earth's terrestrial surface [1]. From 2000 to 2015, the global land cover trend indicated a net loss of natural/semi-natural lands. These losses of land resulted from many processes. Among the processes, we can identify deforestation, unsustainable agricultural practices, urbanization, land tenure, and poverty [2]. This situation is more visible in industrialized countries, in Europe or Asia. Therefore, the land-use study is of fundamental significance, as the land resources play a strategic role in the determining man's economic, social and cultural progress [3].

Indeed, the global land system faces unprecedented pressures from growing human populations and climatic change [4]. Urban sprawl on agricultural land has become a global phenomenon plaguing all countries of the world, rich or poor [5]. This phenomenon has attracted the attention of social researchers since the mid-20th century [6]. Thus, many researchers are interested in the causes and consequences of urbanization. Some authors such as G. Duranton and D. Puga highlight that economic growth drives urban expansion in constructing businesses, dwellings, roads, leisure centers, transportation, etc. [7]. Therefore, the metropolitan regions face the growing problems of urban sprawl, including a decline in natural vegetation, wildlife habitats, and agricultural land [3]. More than 8.8% of European Union (EU) land is used for residential, commercial, and industrial purposes [8]. Other very important factors are the quality of the environmental conditions of agricultural production, population density, and net migration [9], which also affect agricultural land. Therefore, it is important to note that the life of more than 7.7 billion human beings today [10], 9.73 billion by 2050, and 11.2 by 2100 will depend on the soil availability for

**Citation:** Faye, B.; Du, G. Agricultural Land Transition in the "Groundnut Basin" of Senegal: 2009 to 2018. *Land* **2021**, *10*, 996. https:// doi.org/10.3390/land10100996

Academic Editors: Uchendu Eugene Chigbu, Ruishan Chen and Chao Ye

Received: 15 August 2021 Accepted: 16 September 2021 Published: 22 September 2021

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**Copyright:** © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

food production [11]. As long as urban populations continue to grow, the challenge of maintaining food security is increasing [12]. In Eastern and Central European countries, namely in Hungary, Slovak Republic, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, agricultural land prices were gradually increasing in these countries during the past decade [13], and this price depends on the market forces of the supply and the demand [14]. In Romania, the political and socio-economic changes began in the early 1990s had a strong impact on land, especially on the quantity and quality of agricultural terrains [15]. Furthermore, we found that in Bulgaria arable land abandoned without cultivation, represents a very large area because of a shortage of financial resources [16]. In addition, land privatization and farm restructuring are inseparable issues for agriculture and the rural sector in the transformation to a market economy [17]. The case of Slovakia illustrates this. Indeed, the pressure from investors has increased in creating new residential, commercial services and shopping centers, logistic and industrial parks, which is consequently reflected in land-use changes [18]. In summary, in Europe the areas with the most visible impacts of urban sprawl are in countries or regions with high population density and economic activity like Belgium, northern Italy, the Paris and Madrid regions, and Germany [19].

The south Asian region as a whole is experiencing expansion and intensification of cropland and urbanization, shrinking of forests and grassland [20]. On the other hand, in China, for example, the problems in urban-rural spatial structure and food security have been the hot spots of land use research [21]. It is because China has urbanized rapidly over the past three decades, underpinned by rapid economic growth. It has many rapidly growing cities and some that have had declining populations [22]. As such, the per capita area of farmland fell from 0.106 ha in 1996 to 0.092 ha in 2008, raising concerns about food security [23]. Therefore, migration, rural economic development, and urbanization are the primary forces driving the conversion from farmland to non-agricultural uses in China [24]. Other researchers attest that immigration plays an important role in land-use transitions because it leads to urban expansion and farmland occupation [25].

The review of the literature also conduced us to examine land tenure. Indeed, land tenure security refers to the right of individuals and groups of people to effective protection by their government against forcible evictions [26]. Therefore, in the agricultural sector, securing land tenure has regularly been prioritized by policy-makers to ensure and develop more productive agriculture [27]. In that sense, secure tenure is widely recognized as an essential foundation for achieving a range of rural economic development goals [28]. However, land tenure security is central to agricultural production and sustainable use of natural resources [29], and the links between tenure security and agricultural productivity are of primary interest [30]. This may imply that land tenure systems can affect agricultural productivity by influencing the efficient use of inputs and the adoption of modern technology [31]. On another note, secure access to productive land reduces the vulnerability to hunger and poverty to the millions of poor people living in rural areas and depending on agriculture. It influences their capacity to invest in their productive activities and the sustainable management of their resources [32]. From then on, land tenure security is important not only for agricultural production, but it also allows people to diversify their livelihoods by using their land as collateral, renting it out, or selling it [33]. Finally, strengthening land tenure security is key to achieving efficient land allocation among farmers in both in land abundant and land-constrained areas as it facilitates land markets [34].

In the above background, it is important to analyze the evolution of the population to in order to understand rapid urbanization. Globally, more people live in urban areas than in rural areas [35]. We found that 54 percent of the world's population live in urban areas. In view of this, we noted that the urban population of the world has grown rapidly since 1950, from 746 million to 3.9 billion in 2014 [10]. Along with this, the medium-variant projection indicates that the global population could grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030 [36]. Hence, prior work has highlighted that urbanization is a problem because urban expansion inevitably covers some agricultural land.

In contrast, changes in land values and land markets around cities often result in vacant land as the owners anticipate their gains from selling it or using it for non-agricultural uses [22]. Therefore, the changes in land use arise from competing for economic, political, social, and environmental goals [37], and urban sprawl dynamics will also play an important role in the future land-use change in some countries like India [38], and Africa countries. In summary, land-use change is characterized by a high diversity of change trajectories depending on the local conditions, regional context, and external influences [39]. Therefore, it is important to understand the underlying technological, institutional, and economic drivers of land-use change and how they play out in different environmental, socio-economic, and cultural contexts [40].

According to the literature review, the drivers of the agricultural land transition are mainly non-agricultural activities—for instance, residential construction. The more human activities intensify, the more agricultural land is threatened. Therefore, as Senegal is a developing country, this study is important from the point of view of understanding the mechanisms and the main factors influencing the transition of agricultural land. Given this worrying situation, the objective of this work is to (i) understand the degree and trend of transition and evolution of agricultural land space and time. Then, our interest is to (ii) identify the keys drivers of this transition and evolution of agricultural land in the Groundnut Basin. In this study, we will focus on these important issues.
