This article examines the livelihoods, portfolios and degree of deagrarianisation of the peasantry in three villages in northern Ghana. It argues that deagrarianisation should be seen as a process embedded in social change, bearing in mind the reversibility between farm and non-farm livelihood strategies used by households (reagrarianisation?). A livelihoods research approach involving qualitative household interviews and quantitative surveys in three villages in the Kassena-Nankani district constitute primary data for this study. Contrary to the deagrarianisation thesis, this study found that livelihood adaptation, implying both a diversification to new or secondary livelihood activities and changing the form, nature and content of the farm sector, characterised rural livelihoods in the area. The adaptation process involves not just a move from the farm to the non-farm sector, but also an intensification of efforts in the farm sector with seasonal diversification into other livelihood activities. The supposedly ‘booming non-farm sector’ is not entirely real, for reasons of marginalisation and exclusion of the poor peasantry, resulting from spatial, capital, infrastructural and market limitations.
The article describes the food insecurity situation in three villages in northern Ghana. A livelihood approach is used emphasising the vulnerability of the peasants' adaptation to a marginal and remote area. The peasant households are grouped according to level of food insecurity. It is argued that multiple income sources including non-farm activities are necessary to reduce food insecurity for all but a small part of the peasant households.
Land in most of Africa is controlled under the customary tenure system which is governed by well intentioned social and cultural rules meant to grant equal access to families within groups with common interest in land. Rapid changes in the domestic situation of countries resulting from both refractions of policies and influences from the global economy and emerging complexities within the local socio-economic context has altered the traditional land tenure systems in most parts of Africa. In the rural setting and for agricultural purposes, the customary tenure system seems to be crumbling slowly, while in the urban centres and for housing, industrial and commercial purposes the system has collapsed in favour of a commoditised one. The emerging patterns of access in Northern Ghana show growing inequalities in access, control and ownership. There is the need for a new architecture of land rights negotiated by a participatory process and regulated by both state and traditional institutions.
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