Farmers on the Central Plateau of Burkina Faso in West Africa cultivate under precarious conditions. Rainfall variability is extremely high
in this area and accounts for much of the uncertainty surrounding the farmers’ decision-making process. Strategies to cope with these risks
are typically dynamic. Sequential decision making is one of the most important ways to cope with risk due to uncertain rainfall. In this
paper, a stochastic programming model is presented to describe farmers’ sequential decisions in reaction to rainfall. The model describes
farmers’ strategies of production, consumption, selling, purchasing, and storage from the start of the growing season until one year after
the harvest period. This dynamic model better describes farmers’ strategies than do static models that are usually applied. This study
draws important policy conclusions regarding reorientation of research programs and illustrates how operations research techniques can be
usefully applied to study grass root problems in developing countries.