Land, Gender, and Class Relations in Ghana’s Cassava Frontier

Abstract

Lands for domestic production in rural areas have increasingly shrunk and the rules of access have changed as corporate land grabs intensify in many parts of the Global South. These occurrences are outcomes of processes that are packaged in state policies that promote market intervention in agricultural production. In Ghana, state initiatives promote large-scale industrial cassava production in rural areas. This article discusses land grabs in cassava frontier communities, their impacts on land access rules, and social relations. It is argued that while land, gender, and class relations change as a result of competition over, and commodification of, land resources, community institutions, namely chiefs and families, play significant roles that legitimize dispossession of social groups whose land-use rights are derived from other hierarchies. The changes in production relations in the communities are linked to processes linked to older commodity production. Similar changes have occurred at the household level as circuits of commodity production integrate within domestic production. The article highlights different struggles by women and migrants to renegotiate their access rules and their local citizenship status.

Land and Contestations over Autochthony and Local Citizenship in Agrarian Ghana

“…Farmers in this community lost crops on the land, and as a company official had said, "they are not the landowners, so we did not consult them." As argued elsewhere (Torvikey, 2021), companies feign ignorance of landholding structures in communities to absolve themselves from blame in case of conflicts. Apart from the community-based classifications linked to land relations, migrants and indigenes could be found in any community.…”

A framework for understanding land control transfer in agricultural commodity frontiers

“…To illustrate, while agribusinesses, politicians, and speculators may negotiate directly with families over access to land, tactics of persuasion and manipulation are often indirectly carried out by community heads, chiefs, and elders (Ndi et al, 2022; F I G U R E 1 The control transfer framework. Torvikey, 2021). In exchange for different kinds of incentives (e.g., money, land, political assurances, etc.…”

“…The effect of profiteering and exploitation, tactics applied most commonly by those with underlying competitive advantages, is the deepening of channels of social (or class) differentiation (Akram‐Lodhi, 2005; Bernstein, 2010). Recurrently, this process takes the form of the emergence of a generally male, local elite (Caravani, 2019; Greco, 2015; Torvikey, 2021), or of a strata of capitalized outgrowers (Scoones et al, 2018; Sulle, 2017), who secure their control within agricultural commodity frontiers by means of the dispossession of oftentimes already vulnerable groups (e.g., women, migrants, ‘poor’ wage labourers, etc.). In this way, certain smallholder actors themselves become agents and profiteers of the land grab process (Hall, 2011).…”

“…Linking these two tactical dimensions are intermediaries, who are used simultaneously as tools to erode and erect control over land by agro‐interested actors. To illustrate, while agribusinesses, politicians, and speculators may negotiate directly with families over access to land, tactics of persuasion and manipulation are often indirectly carried out by community heads, chiefs, and elders (Ndi et al, 2022; Torvikey, 2021). In exchange for different kinds of incentives (e.g., money, land, political assurances, etc.…”

The Drivers of Medium-Scale Farms and the Emerging Synergies and Contradictions Among Socially-Differentiated Farmers in Northern Ghana

“…The only way women can join their male counterparts on an equal note is if they are rich, because the new commercialised norms respect the rich to whom all courtesies are accorded, irrespective of gender. Unfortunately, many rural women are poor, and depend on their brothers and husbands for access to productive resources (Apusigah, Tsikata, and Mukhopadyay, 2011;Torvikey, 2021). Improving access to land, capital and markets would go a long way to boost women's empowerment in the area (Millar, 2015;Lanz, Prügl and Gerber, 2020).…”