Tomatoes and Livelihood Building in Rural Brong Ahafo, Ghana*

Quick Money and Power: Tomatoes and Livelihood Building in Rural Brong Ahafo, Ghana* Christine Okali and James Sumberg Abstract This article uses the example of small-scale, labour-intensive tomato production in Brong Ahafo, Ghana to explore some prospects of young people’s engagement with the agri-food sector in Africa. Although tomatoes were produced by men and women of all ages, a significant proportion of young men specialised entirely in tomato production, growing three crops per year. Tomato production met short-term capital needs for home-building, marriage, business development and adventure. Young women also engaged in tomato production, although rarely as ‘3-croppers’. A return visit examined the role agriculture played in enabling young people to achieve their earlier life and work objectives. A social-relational approach was adopted, focusing on interdependency and linked lives. Life course analysis highlights shifts that have implications for the changing way people engage in agriculture, rather than assuming that ‘one size fits all at all times’. 1 Introduction contribute either to the wellbeing of the young There is real tension among the common policy people themselves or to the development of the narratives around ‘youth’ in Africa. On the one agricultural sector. In policy terms, this also hand young people are portrayed as a valuable means that when strategising around the resource – ‘the future of the nation’, while on the wellbeing of rural young people it is not other they are described as unemployed and reasonable to start with agriculture. Neither is it underemployed, work-shy, vulnerable, reasonable, when strategising around agricultural undisciplined and prone to risky and antisocial development, to start with the ‘youth problem’. behaviour (Anyidoho et al. 2012). In addition, in most youth-related policies and the narratives ‘Youth’ have vexed agriculture and rural that support them, ‘youth’ are presented as a development policymakers in Africa for a very long homogeneous group, undifferentiated by gender, time. Indeed, the image of a mass migration of age, class or religion, and existing independently young men from rural areas has been used to of families, communities and broader social justify numerous programmes aimed at keeping relations. them in rural areas and engaged in agriculture. These programmes historically centred on In this article we argue that a similar and related providing young, possibly married, men with a tension can be shown to exist between how rural farming package that addressed the less young women and men actually engage with and glamorous aspects of small-scale agriculture – use agriculture to build their livelihoods, and the hard labour with hand tools. One well-documented policies and programmes commonly relied upon example is the Ilora Farm Settlement Scheme, to address the ‘youth in agriculture’ problem. initiated in Nigeria’s former Western State in 1959 Based on a case study of young tomato growers in (Spiro 1985). This scheme was one of a number Brong Ahafo, Ghana, we argue that unless and initiated in various parts of the state to: until policy moves beyond this ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ portrayal of young people, and begins to z attract educated young people into viable appreciate them as part of the rest of society, yet farming units as an alternative to urban seeking their independence, it is unlikely to living; IDS Bulletin Volume 43 Number 6 November 2012 © 2012 The Authors. IDS Bulletin © 2012 Institute of Development Studies Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA 44 z demonstrate that carefully planned farming respects relative to their counterparts in systems can be satisfying and lucrative; surrounding villages (e.g. they contributed much z raise agricultural production to supply the smaller shares of their small maize and cassava growing population of the country as well as to plots to household requirements than their maintain exportable products. spouses), these advantages were apparently insufficient to keep them on the site. Their ‘Progressive farmers’, ‘scientific farming’, departure was also supported by local Yoruba ‘mechanisation’ and ‘reduced drudgery’, along culture that encouraged husbands and wives to with a ‘superior way of life’, were all referred to accumulate independent means to meet their in the early documentation. The description of joint and separate obligations at household and the Ilora Settlement reads like a novel, with wider levels, and by 1976 the downward spiral of young married couples happily settling into their the scheme as a living settlement was continuing new dream homes and work environment. It is with men living in nearby towns and visiting the not a picture of young men and women, together settlement only when necessary (Spiro 1985). and/or separately building their independent lives, possibly but not necessarily remaining in In conception, the Ilora Farm Settlement is not a their places of origin and using agriculture as a million miles away from the Block Farm means to achieve this independence. Programme that is today the central pillar of the Youth in Agriculture Programme at Ghana’s Although the scheme objectives did not explicitly Ministry of Food and Agriculture (Benin et al. exclude young women, by omission and by later 2012). The Block Farm Programme seeks to: reference to ‘settler wives’, women were envisaged as working for and under their z generate employment among the rural poor, husbands. Indeed, the farm plans relied on their especially the youth (emphasis added); labour, which left 14 of the original settlers who z improve incomes among farmers by at least were not married, in a difficult position. Equally, 50 per cent; while cooperative membership was automatic for z increase food security through the use of all male settlers, wives (at least initially no science and technology leading to increased women were allocated land in their own right) productivity and higher yields; were not automatically given membership. z improve farming as a business. These schemes soon experienced problems of Unlike the Ilora Scheme, Block Farms do not settler turnover, and even desertion. Between involve resettlement. However, despite being 1960 and 1965, 42 per cent of the original separated by 50 years of development experience, settlers had left, citing low incomes, hard work with their common focus on youth, better and poor-quality houses. Few settlers were able organisation, increased scale and the use of new to plant all their allocated land (25 acres for technology and mechanisation to improve arable crops and 25 acres for fallow plus cages productivity and profitability, they have much in for broilers) because of insufficient labour, and common. by the 1980s, a number of farms had been merged to form large-scale units devoted to Here we use the example of young tomato maize production. In respect of labour, no growers to argue that Block Farms and other facilities had been made available for visitors or related approaches do not appear to reflect other family members to join settlers at times of either the diversity or the dynamics of young peak labour demand. Wives were among the first people’s actual – indeed instrumental – use of to leave the settlement: they were not supported agriculture to build their livelihoods. Specifically, in their agricultural or trading interests, or in we demonstrate that young people use particular meeting their domestic obligations; they did not forms of engagement in agriculture to meet have access to modern equipment to reduce the tightly circumscribed, age-related livelihood burden of food processing and preparation, fuel needs such as building a house, starting a or water provisioning. By 1976, 30 per cent of business, getting married, starting a family and wives in the remaining households had decided seeking adventure. Further, some investment, to live elsewhere. While the 1976 report suggests made possible through successful tomato that settlement wives had gained in some production, is geared largely towards exiting IDS Bulletin Volume 43 Number 6 November 2012 45 from agriculture. While these investments may production had developed at this and not always yield the desired results and neighbouring sites.1 Using a sample of 27 of the agriculture may remain a part of livelihood tomato producers interviewed in 1999, a four-day portfolios, we suggest that this instrumental use restudy was undertaken in September 2011 to of agriculture has important policy-relevant follow up on how they had actually used returns implications for thinking about livelihoods and from commercial tomato production, and where sustainability within a thriving agricultural agriculture fits into their lives today. economy. For example, programmes such as Block Farms are built on the assumption that 2 Pamdu village they can provide the basis for young people to Pamdu village is located in Brong Ahafo Region establish a career in agriculture. However, it is (Nkoranza Traditional Area, Kintampo District) not at all clear either that young people’s on the main tarmac road between Techiman engagement in agriculture is constrained by the (32km to the south) and Kintampo (27km to the factors addressed by the Block Farm Programme, north). Its location between these two or that they are even interested in careers commercial centres places it in an ideal position dominated by farming. for accessing food markets both to the north and south. Equally, its geographical position at the The remainder of the article is in four parts. In interface between the tree-based, forest farming the next section we introduce the case study systems to the south and savannah systems to the village – Pamdu – and its small-scale commercial north makes it an ideal location for growing a tomato producers. Following this, we turn to the wide range of food crops including maize, yams, various ways that male and female tomato cassava, cowpea, tomato, garden egg, okra, producers gain access to key resources.

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