Land grabs, farmworkers, and rural livelihoods in West Africa: some silences in the food sovereignty discourse

Abstract

The global land rush has spurred small, modest, and big anti-land grab mobilizations, notably the food sovereignty movement. The movement has been instrumental in representing the interests of small-scale family farmers whose livelihoods are threatened by capitalist control over land in the countryside. However, this dominant narrative tends to overlook or deemphasize some important diversity within the peasantry. In West Africa, anti-land grab discourses emphasize family farming as a major collective action frame, focusing less on issues related to agricultural wage labourfarmworkers' access to land, food, and decent working conditions. If food sovereignty is to fully realize its potential power as a counter-narrative to neoliberalism, and as a possible democratic alternative for working people with differentiated and at times competing socio-economic interests, then demands that adequately reflect the agrarian struggles of the rural working people have to be put onto the agenda and engaged better than it is now.

Smallholders in agro-industrial production: Lessons for rural development from a comparative analysis of Ghana’s and Indonesia’s oil palm sectors

“…Such pressures are reported throughout sub-Saharan Africa and carry important risks for the local population (e.g. Ali et al, 2019;Xia, 2016, 2018;Lay et al, 2021), whose economic income and food security depends on their land as their livelihood (Acheampong et al, 2018;Gyapong, 2021). The scarcity of land should therefore clearly limit the potential for expanding large-scale modes of production in Ghana (and other parts of West Africa).…”

Beyond land grabs: new insights on land struggles and global agrarian change

“…In West Africa, Gyapong (2020) highlights the complexities of agrarian transformations that have escaped the land grab debate in much of the recent literature. While anti-land grab discourses emphasize 'family farming' as a framework for food sovereignty, issues related to agricultural wage labour have been relegated to the background.…”

Is the system of rice intensification (SRI) pro poor? Labour, class and technological change in West Africa

“…Consequently, West Africa has active agricultural labour markets where local marginal farmers, labour migrants and youth are common sellers of labour power, i.e. they are compelled to work for others, often neighbours with a wealthier class status (Oya and Pontara, 2015;Gyapong, 2020). Sharecropping was not practiced for lowland rice in the qualitative study region, but it may occur in other parts of West Africa (Delville et al, 2001).…”