In spite of comprehensive market-based reforms and expanding economic incentives to engage in agricultural activities in Ghana, average agricultural growth between 1985 and 1995 remained stagnant at 2 percent per annum, far below the World Bank's anticipated 4 percent annual growth. Based on an in-depth and primarily qualitative study of a sample of more than 200 farmers in the Berekum District of Ghana over the period 1985-1995, this article addresses the question of the slow growth in agriculture. The study investigates which farmers are able to expand production under the conditions of economic reform, and why. In addressing this problem, this article focuses at the point of production and employs a regional political-ecology perspective to indicate how the economic behavior of farmers-the focus of agricultural reforms-is inextricably bound to the culture, politics, and ecology of production within which farmers are embedded. More specifically, the discussion seeks to show that expansion in production extends beyond the influence of the reform's production incentives and is contingent upon farmers' varying ability to use custom and power to negotiate successfully for the critical resource of labor. Such access to labor, this article argues, is needed to meet the formidable challenge and to manage the menace presented particularly by the dominant C. odorata plant species and its ecology of notorious weeds and bushes. By stressing the labor processes of production, this article reflects on ways in which-to borrow Fairhead and Leach's (1996, 8) phrase-"ecological phenomena are 'socialised' and social phenomena 'ecologised' " to shape the outcome of agricultural production.
In this primary research-based paper I highlight an officially neglected housing supply strategy in Ghana. I discuss the ubiquitous in situ housing strategies employed by households of varying socioeconomic means for meeting housing-space demand and the factors that condition these strategies in the Madina-Adenta area of the rapidly expanding Greater Accra Metropolitan Area. Income and available housing space, household and room occupancy rates, changes in household size, length of residence, tenure, and housing stress were factors in the adoption of housing-space strategies. While 44% of respondents expressed great need for additional housing space, lack of financial resources and the problem of affordability were primary constraints on their ability to employ an incremental housing-space strategy. Access to a good supply of affordable housing credit is thus viewed as a critical housing policy mechanism for enabling in situ housing construction.
Current agrarian reforms in Ghana, sponsored by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, are based on the notion that pricing incentives from markets are the key to agricultural investments. The turnaround in the production of the principal agricultural export, cocoa, seems to vindicate this view. However, this perspective is silent on the question of why many farmers continued to produce cocoa in the period preceding the reforms when prices were at their lowest in the country's history. Based on research on the comparative investment patterns of migrant and citizen cocoa farmers in two districts in the Western region of Ghana, this article suggests a holistic approach to comprehending investments. It indicates that the economic behaviour of cocoa farmers is complexly linked to the politics of land tenure, and cultural expectations and obligations.
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