Smallholders and Land Tenure in Ghana: Aligning Context, Empirics, and Policy

Abstract

established in 1975, provides evidence-based policy solutions to sustainably end hunger and malnutrition and reduce poverty. The Institute conducts research, communicates results, optimizes partnerships, and builds capacity to ensure sustainable food production, promote healthy food systems, improve markets and trade, transform agriculture, build resilience, and strengthen institutions and governance. Gender is considered in all of the Institute's work. IFPRI collaborates with partners around the world, including development implementers, public institutions, the private sector, and farmers' organizations, to ensure that local, national, regional, and global food policies are based on evidence. IFPRI is a member of the CGIAR Consortium.

Social network to inform and prevent the spread of cocoa swollen shoot virus disease in Ghana

“…Our results suggest that landowners were more likely to adopt barrier cropping than sharecroppers were, but adoption increased significantly when the farm size was larger than 1.2 ha, especially among sharecroppers. While this result suggests that landowners may be more open to considering requests from their sharecroppers with larger farm sizes, it also points to the limited freedom of action for sharecroppers, which is associated with the fear of job loss when adopting measures such as cutting out infected cocoa trees (Lambrecht and Asare 2015). Focus group participants confirmed the Fig.…”

“…with more knowledge about the measures because knowledge about prevention measures is key to their implementation; and vii) who are the owners of the land they cultivate (as opposed to sharecroppers) because landowners have higher freedom of action than sharecroppers, since they do not face the fear of job loss when adopting certain measures (Lambrecht and Asare 2015) 2 Materials and methods…”

“As a Husband I Will Love, Lead, and Provide.” Gendered Access to Land in Ghana

“…Even when farmers do not have outright ownership of land through inheritance or gifts from family or community members, farmers can access land for shorter or longer durations through cultivation rights on family land in the form of communal tenure. With communal tenure, individual members are allocated a specific parcel on which they have temporary or permanent use or transfer rights (Lambrecht and Asare 2015). Women and men rarely have identical claims to land within the family because they have differentiated positions within the kinship system, which is one of the primary means through which they access land (Whitehead and Tsikata 2003).…”

“…Whether the person has guaranteed access to the same plot of land for a longer duration and whether that person is allowed to borrow, rent, sharecrop, gift, sell, or bequeath the land depend strongly on the community and the specific situation (Lambrecht and Asare 2015). Traditionally, stronger rights are rewarded to a person investing labor or planting trees on the land (Pande and Udry 2005;Lambrecht and Asare 2015).…”

“…As a woman in the Ejisu District (Ashanti Region) explained: "The husband belongs to a family and suppose he dies; his family may come in and say the land belongs to our brother or son so they are coming for it." Yet, men can ensure that at least part of the self-acquired land or family land will be inherited by his children or wife, either by making in vivo transfers or by preparing an oral or written will, provided that it is approved by the man's family members (Kutsoati and Morck 2012;La Ferrara and Milazzo 2014;Lambrecht and Asare 2015;Quisumbing et al 2001). In response, children strategically increase parental transfers to induce land donations before the default (matrilineal) inheritance is enforced (La Ferrara 2007).…”