From Subsistence to Commercial Producers : Processes of State-led Agrarian Change, Land Tenure Dynamics and Social Differentiation among Smallholders in Ghana

Sammanfattning: Agricultural commercialization is concerned with improving market-oriented production in expectation of maximizing profit. While previous state policies in Ghana favoured commercialization by medium and large scale cultivators, there exists a new national commitment dubbed the Planting for Food and Jobs Policy that seeks to leverage on the cumulative productive potential of small farmers for sustained economic growth. This requires structural shifts away from subsistence towards entrepreneurial modes of production. While exogenous factors such as demographic, infrastructural and technological changes are central to eliciting optimal gains from commercialization processes, the thesis concerns the endogenous aspects relating to intra-household and intra-community land asset distribution, production capacities among different smallholder groups and institutional synergies between land tenure actors. The linkages between commercialization and land tenure outcomes are neither always direct nor tangible on the ground. They are determined by varied factors that may improve the commercialization and land tenure conditions of one group as a result or constrain another. Can we therefore posit that the process of smallholder commercialization relates largely to inevitable processes of social differentiation and related loss of land? This thesis calls into question these issues within an analytical framework of theories of access, property rights, smallholder differentiation, gender dynamics and de/repeasantization and de/reagrarianization.The empirical basis of the thesis is qualitative, utilizing key informant and household interviews, focus group discussions, participatory rural appraisal exercises and document analysis. Findings show how tense interactions between state and customary actors fuelled by narratives of traditionalization, non-interference and replacement reduce the opportunities for synergies in implementing agricultural policies. The thesis further shows how migrant farmers’ tenurial rights are weakened by processes of commercialization leading to the development of relational forms of land access depicted by in-kind food crop gifts to land owners. They are further engaged in taungya agreements in which they exchange their labour for “free” land access. These agreements are indicative of labour exploitation and the creation of transactional rather than the theorised landlessness and waged labour in the context of commercialization.The thesis also shows how women’s possibilities for commercialization are limited by structural factors and with it their ability to hold cultivation claims over communal land. Men however do not face these constraints and tend to consolidate their hold on customary land. Nonetheless, women are incentivized by the unique nature of cashew cultivation in circumventing structural barriers as well as its proprietary attributes under customary law, to seek land for cultivation. With these outcomes, it is imperative that stakeholders give consideration to the synergies between land tenure actors and the potential polarizing effects of commercialization on the production possibilities of different groups and on land tenure.