ABC D E EF D B B A B E
A BCDA EAD EF AD BEE
CD B B
E F D CA F D F F C A A BA C C A AA A A A C C A EA A A
A B ABCA DE FBE FE C A FBE A F E A D E A CF C AEA F
F A AFAE C CA FD F CAF A F B E A C Thanks
I wish to thank the people who enabled me to carry out this study, especially the Regional Agriculture Development Unit Director and the Wa Municipal Unit Director and their teams. They welcomed me and did their best to help me. Special thanks to Abu Huudu for his availability, his logistic help and his vast knowledge. His commitment in the Upper West Region agriculture development was quite impressive A special thought for Emmanuelle Noirtin and S. R. Coleman, who shared with me a friendly home and office. I will not forget this five-month cohabitation ! I am grateful to Sixtus D. Segtub, student from the University for Development Studies, who provided the translation for technical and economic interviews. Many thanks to the farmers, traders and people in the neighbourhood of Wa, who devoted a lot of their time to make introduce me to the specificity of their agriculture and their culture. I do hope this study will be useful to them. Last but not least, I am most grateful to Olivier Ducourtieux for his support and his constructive comments before, during and after the field work. And of course, a special thought for Léa, Laure, Mariella, Rémi and Arthur who achieved similar studies for the same project, in other regions of Ghana. Our regular calls have been very useful for both work and morale !
3 Abstract : Alleviating poverty and food insecurity that affect several regions of Ghana is one of the government’s priority. The Rice Sector Support Project (RSSP) aims at increasing livelihood of the poor farmers by developing lowland rice production. The donor asked for an agrarian system diagnosis in order to adapt RSSP actions and evaluate its impact in the developed areas. The study took place around Wa, capital of the Upper West Region. This dissertation presents a technical and economic analysis of the identified farming systems. The main farm differentiation factors are also detailed to understand agriculture dynamics. Until 1950, agriculture was practised at a community level and external trade was not much developed. Population increase, land tenure conditions, as well as post-independence development policies have led to rapid changes in the farming systems. In many farms, the decrease in fallow duration causes a decline in soil fertility and structural stability. Facing decreasing yields, farmers have adopted new crops and new varieties. Government subsidies have made fertilisers and tractor ploughing services affordable. Animal traction and dry season gardens have offered new opportunities to farmers who could afford them. Gathering still occupies an important place in the agrarian system : a dawadawa and shea-tree parkland is maintained to provide essential proteins and fats. Livestock raising is not traditionally linked to agriculture, and animals are considered as a capital to solve family issues. Farmers are now looking for a way to combine agriculture and livestock raising in their production system. The land tenure system favours the wealthiest landowners and prevent poor farmers from accessing to a land ; it could jeopardise the sustainability of the infrastructures developed by RSSP. This document also presents some proposals from the farmers’ interviews.
Résumé : Le Ghana cherche à lutter contre la pauvreté et la malnutrition qui touchent plusieurs régions du pays. Le projet de soutien à la filière rizicole (RSSP) a pour objectif d’augmenter le niveau de vie des paysans les plus pauvres en développant leur production de riz dans les bas- fonds. Le bailleur de fond a commandé une analyse-diagnostic de la situation agricole dans les zones concernées par le projet afin d’en adapter les actions et d’en évaluer l’impact. Ce mémoire présente l’analyse du fonctionnement technico-économique des systèmes de production autour de la capitale de la région Upper West. Les principaux facteurs de différenciation des exploitations agricoles y sont aussi explicités. Jusqu’en 1950, la majorité des exploitations conservent une économie traditionnelle centrée sur la communauté. L’augmentation de la population, le système foncier et les politiques de développement post-indépendance vont entraîner une différenciation rapide des systèmes de pro- duction. Dans de nombreuses exploitations, la diminution de la durée de la friche provoque une baisse de la fertilité et de la stabilité structurelle des sols. Pour compenser la baisse tendancielle des rendements, des agriculteurs adoptent de nouvelles cultures et de nouvelles variétés. L’accès aux services de labour au tracteur et aux engrais est facilité par es subventions gouvernementales. Le développement de la culture attelée et des jardins de saison sèche offrent de nouvelles opportunités pour les paysans qui peuvent accéder à ces techniques. La collecte occupe encore une place impor- tante dans le système agraire, avec notamment l’entretien d’un parc arboré à nérés et karités qui fourni des protéines et des matières grasses essentielles. L’élevage est traditionnellement considéré comme un capital peu lié à l’agriculture, mais les agriculteurs sont à la recherche d’un mode de fonctionnement permettant de combiner agriculture et élevage dans leurs systèmes de production. Le système foncier, qui favorise les grands propriétaires et privent les plus petits de l’accès à la terre, pourrait compromettre la durabilité des aménagements du projet RSSP. Ce mémoire présente aussi des propositions issues des entretiens avec les acteurs économiques locaux.
4 Table des matières
Introduction 8
1 Wa, capital of the Upper West Region, has a strong influence on agriculture in the study area 10 1.1 Ghana is more and more opened up to international trade ...... 10 1.1.1 Climate and relief make Ghana a very contrasting country ...... 10 1.1.2 The Ghanaian population is urbanising, but agriculture remains the first em- ployment sector ...... 13 1.1.3 Investments have long been concentrated in the South of Ghana ...... 15 1.1.3.1 The pre-colonial Ghana : a society of hunter-gatherer farmers prac- tising slash-and-burn agriculture ...... 16 1.1.3.2 The Gold Coast under European domination : a colony of exploi- tation of gold, slaves and agricultural resources ...... 16 1.1.3.3 After the 1957 independence, the democratic regime of Nkrumah drifted towards dictatorship and led to economic crisis ...... 18 1.1.3.4 Rawling’s Ghana : rigour and structural adjustment ...... 18 1.1.3.5 Ghana today : ambitious programs to improve food self-sufficiency, education and health, and fight against poverty ...... 20 1.2 The Rice Sector Support Project fits into the scheme of the national agriculture development policies ...... 20 1.2.1 RSSP : strengthening the rice sector to improve food security and incomes of poor farmers ...... 20 1.2.2 An agrarian system diagnosis to understand the situation and adapt the pro- ject actions ...... 21 1.3 The study area belongs to the Black Volta watershed and is organised around the town of Wa ...... 23 1.3.1 The Upper West Region is one of the poorest regions in Ghana ...... 23 1.3.2 The study area has been chosen to meet the needs of the project ...... 24 1.3.3 A landscape of mixed farming on uplands and rice cultivation on lowlands . . 25
2 The gap between production systems has widened during the last decades 29 2.1 The early XXth century agrarian system : slash-and-burn agriculture on the uplands . 29 2.2 The 1960-1983 period : the modernisation of agriculture was intended and supported by the government ...... 33 2.2.1 Population growth impaired the tenure system and fertility reproduction . . . 33 2.2.2 The moto-mechanisation of agriculture under Nkrumah’s regime allow the landowners to increase their farmed acreage ...... 34 5 2.2.3 The development of lowland rice and upland cotton ...... 34 2.2.4 Farmers who could not increase their acreage tried to intensity their produc- tion per surface unit ...... 36 2.2.5 The development of state schools in the 1960s and the increase of the social differentiation ...... 38 2.3 The 1983-1995 period is characterised by the liberalisation of the economy and cuts in public support ...... 39 2.3.1 Animal traction was a profitable alternative to tractors ...... 39 2.3.2 Dry season gardens first interested the farms with limited capital and workforce 39 2.3.3 These evolutions turn the community organisation upside down ...... 40 2.4 The 1995-present period : agriculture is a means of alleviating poverty and food dependence ...... 40 2.4.1 New plants, supported by governmental and NGO programs, are integrated in the production systems ...... 41 2.4.2 The recent urban development increases social differentiation ...... 41 2.5 The current production systems ...... 42 2.5.1 Methodology ...... 42 2.5.2 Dagati farms with pig raising and backyard fields (SP10) ...... 45 2.5.3 The big landowners with cattle kept by a Fulani (SP1, SP2) and the small SP4 type landowners ...... 50 2.5.3.1 Big landowners with cattle kept by a Fulani – the largest type (SP1) 50 2.5.3.2 Big landowners with cattle kept by a Fulani – the medium type (SP2) 54 2.5.3.3 Upland and lowland cultivation, high fertilisation (SP4) ...... 56 2.5.4 Fulani herders farming maize with organic fertilisation (SP11) ...... 58 2.5.5 Upland crops with no fertilisation (SP7a, SP7b with oxen) ...... 60 2.5.5.1 Upland crops with no fertilisation with no traction oxen (SP7a) . . 60 2.5.5.2 Upland crops with no fertilisation with a pair of traction oxen (SP7b) 61 2.5.6 Lowland, upland and dry season garden cultivation (SP3a, SP3b, SP3c) . . . 64 2.5.6.1 Lowland, upland and dry season garden cultivation – large surfaces (SP3a) ...... 64 2.5.6.2 Lowland, upland and dry season garden cultivation – medium sur- faces (SP3b) ...... 67 2.5.6.3 Upland and dry season garden cultivation, uncultivated lowlands (SP3c) ...... 69 2.5.7 Farms managed by women (SP9) ...... 71 2.5.8 The small precarious farms (SP8 a, b, c and d) ...... 73 2.5.9 The farms with a high investment level (SP5 and SP6) ...... 79 2.5.9.1 The farms specialised in cash crops (SP5) ...... 79 2.5.9.2 Intensive lowland farming (SP6) ...... 82 2.6 The current production systems are bound to evolve quickly over the next years . . . 84
3 As implemented, the RSSP does not seem to be able to respond to the develop- ment issues of the study area 88 3.1 Some points have to be checked before putting the results of this study into the regional context ...... 89 3.1.1 About community and farmers sampling ...... 89 6 3.1.2 About the reliability of the gathered information ...... 89 3.1.3 An in-depth study of agricultural value chains is missing in this diagnosis . . 89 3.1.4 Can the study be generalised to the whole region ? ...... 90 3.2 Presently, the objectives of the project seem hard to fulfil ...... 91 3.2.1 The project penalises the poorest farmers ...... 91 3.2.1.1 Willing to start lowland development quickly has forced the project team to skip basic steps ...... 91 3.2.1.2 A possible effect of the RSSP on the economy of the study area . . 92 3.2.2 Rice inter-profession is nonexistent ...... 94 3.2.3 Credit structures are not developed enough ...... 95 3.2.4 Like many other projects, the RSSP focuses on only one production . . . . . 95 3.3 Several development axes could be thoroughly studied in the study area ...... 96 3.3.1 Adapting the land tenure system would favour investment and make farms durable ...... 96 3.3.2 Farmers need long-term visibility to plan their production ...... 96 3.3.3 A real association between agriculture and livestock raising would partly solve the problem of soil fertility reproduction ...... 97
Conclusion 99
Bibliography 100
A Appendices 103 A.1 Equipment ...... 103 A.2 Price and unit systems used in the study ...... 104 Terms of reference ...... 106
7 Introduction
Since its independence in 1957, the Republic of Ghana stands out from its neighbours by its democratic regime. Although the share of agriculture has been declining from 60 to 30% of the GNP since 1975 for the benefit of services, the country relies a lot on export productions, mainly cocoa. Agriculture is still the main source of income for more than half of the population. In the north of the country, the Upper West region faces poverty and malnutrition. This region has experienced an important population growth and farmers self-sufficiency is not always guaranteed. The communities surrounding the capital Wa encounter rural development issues, increased by the rapid development of the city that nibbles land.
The goverment of Ghana is implementing numerous agricultural development programs, sup- plemented by many NGO projects. The Rice Sector Support Project (RSSP) aims at developing lowland rice cultivation and strengthening the rice sector in four regions, in order to alleviate food insecurity and poverty. As regards the project implementation, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture has asked for four agricultural diagnoses in the regions involved. These studiesaim at understanding the dynamics and challenges of agriculture in developed areas, in order to adapt the national project to local contexts. In addition to identifying beneficiaries and victims of the project, special attention has been paid to land and water management. To what extent a rice cultivation development project like RSSP can be in line with the Upper West region context, especially around the quickly growing capital Wa ? Will the project, as it is implemented, achieve its objectives and what may be its impact on the agriculture of the area ?
We will firstly present our methodology and the specificities of the study area, setting them back in the regional and national contexts. We will then study the dynamics of the local agriculture that have led to the current diversity of farms. Finally, we will analyse the possible impact of projects such as RSSP in the study area, from the issues identified during our work.
8 Abbreviations
DADU : District Agriculture Development Unit (MOFA) DSG : Dry season garden FAO : Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations MOFA : Ghana Ministry of Food and Agriculture, contracting authority of RSSP. NGO : Non-governmental organisation RADU : Regional Agriculture Development Unit (MOFA) RSSP : Rice Sector Support Project. UDS : University for Development Studies WSG : Wet season garden
Abbreviations used to describe the cropping systems : B : Beans Ba : Bambara Beans Ca : Cassava Co : Cotton F : Fallow G : Groundnuts M : Millets Ma : Maize Ok : Okro Pe : Pepper S : Sorghum So : Soyabeans To : Tomatoes V : Vegetables Y : Yam
9 1 Wa, capital of the Upper West Region, has a strong influence on agriculture in the study area
1.1 Ghana is more and more opened up to international trade
1.1.1 Climate and relief make Ghana a very contrasting country
Located in West Africa, Ghana has common borders with Ivory Coast to the West, Burkina Faso to the North and Togo to the East (figure 1.1). It opens over 550 km on the Guinea Gulf in the South. The country stretches over 650 km from North to South between latitudes 5° and 11° North and over 350 km from East to West, covering an area of 239000 km². Ghana and Nigeria have maintained strong ties, as they are two English-speaking countries surrounded by French-speaking countries. The country is divided into 10 regions, which include 170 districts, the basic administrative unit.
Figure 1.1 – Location of Ghana in West Africa (from Google Maps)
The country’s highest point is at 876 metres in the Togo mountains, but the relief is rather level and rarely exceeds 500 metres. South-West of Ghana, a band of 100 to 150 km is characterized by hills and plains no more than 100 metres high. The North consists in plateaus between 200 and 500 metres high, carved by the water system. The Togo Mountains, orientated North/South, and the Kwahu plateau, oriented North-West/South-East, mark the boundaries of the Volta basin. Three major rivers drain the country to merge in Lake Volta : Black Volta, to the West, marking the border with Burkina Faso ; White Volta to the North, also rising in Burkina ; River Oti, to the East, which forms part of the border with Togo. Built in 1965, the Akosombo Dam has made Lake 10 Volta the largest artificial lake in the world ; it has enabled the creation of heavy industries and the development of the national electricity network. The study area belongs to the watershed of the Black Volta.
Figure 1.2 – Overview of the relief, the water system and the main agro-ecological zones of Ghana (design : N. Brulard from [5, 46, 19, 61])
The climate of Ghana is very diverse, owing to the combined influence of maritime and conti- nental air masses. According to Oppong-Anane [46, 2001] and Boyon [19, 1958], six major agro- ecological zones can be identified across the country (figure 1.2). The coastal area forms a band of 30 to 60 km to the South. Fishing is highly developed in the sea and the many rivers that drain the area. The western part of this area is exposed to oceanic air masses that discharge more than 2000 mm of rain each year on a bimodal regime, and is characterised by a moist evergreen forest. Sheltered from those air masses, the eastern coastal area receives about 800 mm of precipitation and has a savannah landscape. A deciduous forest extends over the Kwahu plateau and part of the Mountains of Togo. The north is characterized by a unimodal rainfall pattern associated with a savannah-like landscape. Depending on the rainfalls, there is a strong gradient in vegetation differentiation, from a sparse forest to the South to a grassy savannah with few trees to the North. On top of the great diversity of agro-ecosystems, there a wide variety in terms of urbanisation, infrastructure and economic development.
11 Ghanaian agriculture employs 50% of the population over 156000 km², that is 69% of the territory. The agricultural area has been steadily increasing since 1980, by nearly 1% per year, at the expense of the forest. Although it is difficult to separate agriculture and forest areas in slash-and- burn and agroforestry systems, the World Bank estimates that forest area has decreased from 33% of the country area in 1990 to 22% in 2010. More and more land is used to compensate for the increasing population and the declining soil fertility. Growing urbanisation competes with agriculture in the use of land.
Figure 1.3 – Evolution of some crop productions in Ghana (from FAOSTAT [9])
Figure 1.4 – Comparison of production and domestic consumption for some of the major products (average over the period 2000-2010 from FAOSTAT [9])
The production of calorie crops, such as cassava, yam and plantain, has shown a sharp growth during the last decades. They fit with degraded soils, but have little nutritional value. Their produc- tion has been multiplied by 4 to 8 in 50 years (figure 1.3). In contrast, the production of traditional cereals such as sorghum and millet has barely increased. However, cereals such as wheat and rice 12 have seen their production multiplied by 3 or 4. Two factors may have affected this evolution. The increase of yields and the farmed surface, with the support of government programs, has raised local production. But the opening of the borders has put local production in competition with interna- tional grain and limited the increase of cereal production. As can be seen in figure 1.4, half of the consumed rice is imported, mainly from Thailand. On average in the country, 10 kg of fertilizer are used per farmed hectare. Most of the work is done by hand, as few farmers have tractors. The transition from a frontier cocoa cultivation to a permanent cultivation has resulted in a decline in exports. The Ghanaian government intends to increase production, giving incentives to farmers, such as fertiliser and pesticide subsidies through the CocoaBoard 1. We will not dwell on the main export crops in Ghana, such as cocoa, palm oil and cotton, since they are not very representative of the study area.
Imports of living animals account for less than 3% of the total stocks. Most of the imported animals come from the Sahel to be slaughtered and consumed in Ghana. Indeed, the South is not well suited to breeding, with its forest areas and its densely populated plains. The presence of trypanosomiasis in the south has also been a obstacle to the development of cattle breeding. Conversely, northern Ghana and Sahelian areas are well suited to sedentary or nomadic ranching. The country also imports two-thirds of its poultry consumption, in the form of frozen chicken (figure 1.5). The products of hunting in fallow land and forests are the second largest source of meat nationwide.
Figure 1.5 – Livestock population and meat imports (from FAOSTAT [9])
1.1.2 The Ghanaian population is urbanising, but agriculture remains the first employment sector
The population is unevenly divided over the territory. According to the 2010 census, 18 % of the 24 million people live in the capital Accra and its agglomeration, when the three northern regions are inhabited by only 17 % of the population. The Population is getting more and more urban : in 2009, half of the population lived in cities, while in 1990, two thirds of the Ghanaians were still rural. Urban population growth rate has been around 4 % per year, against 1 % for rural population. The country is undergoing a demographic transition. With the development of health
1. Official agency of cocoa marketing 13 facilities and hygiene education, mortality rate has been cut by half since 1960 and life expectancy now exceeds 60 years. The birth rate has risen from 47 ‰ to 32 ‰ in fifty years. As a consequence, the country has a yearly population growth close to 2.5 % and the population has doubled over the past 25 years. Ghana’s population counts many ethnic, cultural and linguistic groups, which requires to adapt national policies to the different contexts. Traditional authorities still occupy a major place in Ghana, and customary law, with the role of local chiefs is legally recognized, especially as regards to land management. Although English is the only official language, nine local languages are also recognized. Monotheistic religions supplant or combine with animism : nowadays, Christians account for 60 % of the population and Muslims 15 %. The north is predominantly Muslim, while the south is predominantly Christian.
Ghana is internationally recognized for its democratic regime, for both the multi-party elections and the respect of civil liberties as well as freedom of the press. However, the constitutional regime leaves little room for Parliament against the President. In 2005, Ghana was the first country to be assessed as part of the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) of the African Union. This review focuses on four main items : 1) democracy and political governance, 2) economic governance, 3) firms governance and 4) socio-economic development. It enables authorities to set up a plan of action to improve these four axes. Since 2002, Ghanaian government has made great efforts in reducing poverty, by acting on education, health and access to land, through the Strategic Framework for Poverty Reduction.
Figure 1.6 – Contribution of various sectors in the Gross Domestic Product of Ghana (from World Bank data [7])
The country has shown an average growth of 5% per year since 1985, bringing its GDP to 18 billion dollars in 2010. Consumer prices have inflated by 17 % per year over the 2000-2010 period as against 37 % between 1980 and 1990. The country, 2th world exporter of cocoa after the Ivory Coast and ahead of Indonesia, is highly dependent on world prices : in 2009, Ghana exported 1.15 billion dollars of cocoa beans and 180 million dollars of cocoa butter [9]. Although the importance of agriculture in GDP growth has steadily declined since the late 1970s (figure 1.6), agriculture contributes for more than 30 % of the domestic value added. The presence of a forest area, which ensures the cultivation of cocoa as well as timber exports with high added value, is the main reason for this importance. Other export agricultural products, such as palm oil, shea nuts, cashew nuts, yams and pineapples, count each for less than 3 % of cocoa export value. Agriculture remains the largest employment sector in Ghana (Figure 1.7), occupying 50 % of working women and 60 % of working men. The service sector is growing fast, with the development of commercial activities and crafts by women. Construction is booming because of the numerous urban development policies. This 14 sector contributes up to 50 % to the GDP. The industrial sector is mainly represented here by mining activities, which are largely in the hands of foreign investors. Ghana, formerly called Gold Coast, is the world’s 10th gold producer, with over 80 tonnes per years ; production has recently increased due to new extraction techniques. Ghana also has large deposits of bauxite, manganese and diamonds. Since 2010, an European company has been exploiting an offshore oilfield, which should bring one billion dollars a year in Ghana. The country currently imports all the oil it consumes. In 2011, the international increase in oil prices has has a strong impact on the national economy, as the price of fuel at the pump rose by 30 %. Other major industries are metallurgy, around the Akosombo Dam, and the manufacture of products from natural rubber (mattresses, tires). Ghana’s budget deficit is increasing, because of the significant public expenditures and debt service, debt amounting to 6.5 billion dollar in 2010 [7]. The ongoing crisis in OECD countries has limited the demand for Ghana products, as well as remittances from the Ghanaian diaspora. The highly developed shadow economy deprives the State of significant cash flow [8]. According to the World Bank, Ghana has little room to improve its fiscal position.
Figure 1.7 – Employment in different sectors of the economy depending on the gender (from World Bank data [7])
Nationwide, nearly 60 % of the population is literate. Most jobs are informal and often preca- rious. Once again, these figures mask an important territorial diversity. In the less urbanised North, the agricultural population represents a larger part of the total population than in the rest of the country. Investment in infrastructure and education has been smaller and is more recent than in the South.
1.1.3 Investments have long been concentrated in the South of Ghana
The history of Ghana has been marked by the colonial period and three centuries of slave trade with the Europeans. If some of the following elements are from the interviews carried out for the study, the vast majority comes from literature. We can cite among other authors H. Almeida-Toper [24], J. Rouch [53, 54], J. Giri [31] and G. Fischer [28].
15 1.1.3.1 The pre-colonial Ghana : a society of hunter-gatherer farmers practising slash- and-burn agriculture
There are traces of very ancient presence of agriculture and craft in Ghana. Around - 1500, Kintampo culture distinguished itself with stone rasps and potteries exported throughout the region. In the South of Ghana, a workshop of millstones and axes has also been discovered around Kintampo. Within the family unit, the labour was divided between agriculture, livestock raising, hunting, fishing and gathering, crafts and trade. In some ethnic groups, slave families would be attached to master families, but masters would also take part in the farm-work (semi-slavery). The elders would manage the distribution of both goods and services, they would also ensure group cohesion.
Over the centuries preceding the arrival of European colonials, people from the North and the Sahel region massively migrated south in search of new lands and resources. The South and the coast were then very sparsely populated. Numerous communities had been formed just before the arrival of the Europeans, so that these were not considered as strangers or invaders. Themselves strangers to this land, the local people agreed to the European terms of trade. It was quite different for the rich and powerful Ashanti kingdom, with its feudal organisation and its control of trade routes, including those of ancient gold. It resisted and negotiated harshly until the middle of XIXth century.
1.1.3.2 The Gold Coast under European domination : a colony of exploitation of gold, slaves and agricultural resources
Thanks to their new caravels, the Portuguese reached the shores of Ghana in 1472 to establish trading posts. They aimed at getting their hands on the sources of the gold that runs through the desert to the Maghreb. The climate and the tropical diseases discouraged the Europeans from settling colony in the Gold Coast, nicknamed “ the white man’s tomb / grave”. It was only to be an exploitation colony, for gold at first, then for slaves and agricultural commodities when the amounts of gold turned out to be disappointing. Many other foreign powers, including the English and Flemish, set up trading posts in the Gold Coast a few years after the arrival of the Portuguese. Comparing the low gold profits to the potential for development in South America, the Portuguese left the region to the English. For the latter too, the Ghanaian productions became less interesting than those of the American colonies , especially in the Caribbean. Sugar and cotton exports supplied British industries and weighed heavily in Parliament. The African colony became a workforce stock, feeding the rapidly growing triangular trade. As for gold trade, the colonials relied on local middlemen to provide them with products. Ethnic groups, often already slave owners, went into wars to capture slaves and sell them or exchange them with the colonials. Around 1750, Rouch [53, 1956] valued at 35,000 the number of slaves exported every year from the forts in Ghana. They were certainly not all from the Gold Coast territory, but the massive export reduced population growth. This left deep marks on the northern territories since most of the slaves were captured in what is called the Gurunsi. The populations had no point in intensifying their agriculture or adapting their techniques, as the density of population was stagnating or decreasing. Colonisation led to a widespread use of metal in the region : slaves or local products were long traded against iron bars, that the people melted down to make tools.
With the abolition of slavery in 1833, the British Crown was less interested in the Gold Coast, which was constantly ravaged by ethnic wars for the possession of new territories or for the renewal
16 of agricultural slaves 2. But many English traders remained in the country and from 1863 asked for the power to come back to assert its authority. The British exploited rivalries between ethnic groups in Ghana to consolidate their power. This strategy enabled the British to annex the “colony” of Gold Coast in 1874, which corresponds to the southern plains of the country. They progressed to the north and forced the Ashanti Confederacy to disband. At the beginning of XXth century, conflicts were subdued and England annexed the Ashanti and extended its protectorate to the northern territories. The colonial administration launched major projects to control the territory and exploit its resources. Roads were built from 1923 in place of the old gold trade and slave routes. While some farms in the South (and to a lesser extent in the North) produced cash crops to be sold to Europeans traders, most people lived on agriculture in non-cash systems. Due to the abolition of slavery, the recruitment of workers became extremely difficult. According to Fall [27, 1980], “the organisation of work, still linked to family structure, was more in the context of domestic production. At this stage, work appeared as a service that was done, exchanged and valuated in relation to the family organisation. The service to others was only conceived as the expression of a form of solidarity for the benefit of the family or the community. For the peasant producer, working the land for others expressed a state of enslavement. It was a symbol of servitude incompatible with the status of free men.” The British government then set up a system of “time commitment” to force people to give some time to work almost for free for colonials or large farmers close to the regime. With this system, cash crops such as cocoa, cotton and peanuts quickly developed
The annexations and the British governance gave rise to nationalist movements. The ARPS 3 gathered Ghanaian leaders and served as a link between the colonial government and traditional au- thorities to defend the interests of local people. The colonial powers eventually deprived the company of its national legitimacy. In 1920, the West African National Congress replaced the ARPS, seeking its support in nationalist movements in neighbouring countries rather than within the Gold Coast, and marked the beginnings of the Pan-African movement. The Congress asked in vain for elections to launch the process of democratisation and independence. Nationalist movements remained local until 1937, when the Colony and Ashanti cocoa farmers united to boycott the European trading companies. They accused the latter of agreeing to lower the prices paid to producers, and it turned out that 14 major companies had actually agreed. Producers ceased selling and buying products from these companies for eight months until the government agreed to provide the cocoa marketing, with guaranteed prices to producers. This production played a major role in the Ghanaian economy, the CocoaBoard (the cocoa marketing board) making important debits in cocoa profits to regulate the economy. But the economy remained fragile due to its high dependence on the frontier system in cocoa production : cocoa represented 60 % of the export value in 1958 and 35 % of the national income.
The boundaries of the Gold Coast were defined at the partition of Africa in the XIXth century and did not correspond to boundaries of different ethnic groups. The English relied on the tribal administration to govern the country. The multitude of ethnic groups found a unity, a cohesion in a common struggle for independence.
Nationalist movements intensified and caused the rise of Kwame Nkrumah, a political leader educated in England and the United States.
2. We can refer to the article by J. Rouch (1990), Les cavaliers aux vautours. Les conquêtes Zerma dans le Gurunsi (1856-1900) [54]. 3. Gold Coast Aborigines’ Protection Society
17 1.1.3.3 After the 1957 independence, the democratic regime of Nkrumah drifted to- wards dictatorship and led to economic crisis
Nkrumah differed from the United Gold Coast Convention members by trying to move towards a mass movement. He was jailed in 1948 during a demonstration against the European traders. In 1949, he founded the Convention People’s Party (CPP) and found support among the employees, the women and the youth. The CPP became increasingly influential and Nkrumah took part in the first cabinet of the Gold Coast. The colonial authorities held elections in July 1956 and Nkrumah got the support of the population.
According to Boyon [19, 1958], “the first urgent task was to uphold the unity, beyond the diversity of ethnicities, cultures and historical traditions. [...] Despite the small size of its population, Ghana was threatened in its cohesion through the interplay of particularism as soon as the fight for independence had triumphed. And the March 1957 Constitution defined a regional organisation that met in a certain way the great genuine groups .” During the first years after the independence, English was the only official language especially in primary and secondary education, which became free and compulsory in 1961. For Nkrumah, the independence of Africa was to be considered at the pan-African level by removing the factors of division. The multiplicity of languages was seen as an obstacle to development in Africa and the colonial language was paradoxically seen as a tool for economic liberation [59]. But from 1962, local debates had to be in local languages to limit the domination of the wealthy educated classes and to calm social tensions. Nkrumah’s challenge was to gather people around the state and not around the tribal unit.
In 1960, with the First Republic, Nkrumah and his government got closer to the socialist model and asserted their ideology by establishing a national production system. To achieve this objective, some strategic foreign companies were nationalised. The July 1962 program for work and happiness marked a step toward socialism : both modernisation and liberation resulting form technical progress. Nkrumah intended to modernise agriculture by promoting moto-mechanisation. This required an increase in farm size, so that the creation of state farms accelerated from 1962 on, but they met with very limited success. Agriculture remained mainly staple-crop-oriented, with the exception of cocoa plantations. The government got interested in the North as a place of production, and not only as a reservoir of seasonal workforce for the southern plantations. Agricultural investments were directed on the one hand towards staple crops to cover basic nutritional needs and, on the other hand, towards those that served the balance of payments (rice comes into both categories).
After a democratic beginning, Nkrumah’s political decisions turned dictatorial from 1961 on- ward. The repression of opponents and a disastrous economy planning led to an economic crisis : unemployment was rising, resources were wasted, agriculture was neglected. Corruption was wides- pread, and the informal sector took precedence over legal markets. Nkrumah was finally overthrown in 1966. A succession of military regimes ensued, all failing to address the economic and social issues of the country. Most were overthrown by coups within a few months or years. Jerry Rawling’s coup in 1979 and his rise to power between 1981 and 2001 marked a turning point in the history of Ghana.
1.1.3.4 Rawling’s Ghana : rigour and structural adjustment
To solve its budget problems, the country frequently resorted from the late 1970s to loans from the IMF and the World Bank . Jerry Rawlings tried to reduce corruption and revive the economy. Price controls, initiated by his predecessors, were reinforced. After a difficult year in 1983, he called for foreign powers. The Bretton Woods institutions offered the country a structural adjustment plan characterised by a currency devaluation and a policy of austerity [40, 36, 51]. 18 Before the structural adjustment plan (Economy Recovery Program in Ghana, ERP) in 1983, Ghana’s economy was based on gold exports, cocoa and timber. The ERP had two main objectives : stabilizing the economy in the short term and deeply changing the economy in the longer term. GDP growth increased from 1.5 % between 1970 and 1983 to 5 % per year after 1983. Efforts were made to improve infrastructure and the share of industry in the economy to open Ghana to international trade. The currency of Ghana, the cedi, was severely devalued to boost exports : one US $ was worth 2.75 cedis in 1983 and 3400 cedis in 1999. Ghana thus found itself in direct competition on international markets with other developing countries that, following the same plans, were exporting the same agricultural commodities at low cost. The saturated market did not provide remunerative prices and hence a race to the quantities exported. Meanwhile, due to the devaluation, Ghana was,paying more for its imports, particularly for oil and machinery. A significant share of GDP was also used to repay government debt. To cope, the government chose to lay off thousands of civil servants, thus increasing the unemployment rate and the importance of the parallel sector. The education and health systems were affected and social inequalities increased. The ERP was designed to stimulate access to credit in the private sector. But the government borrowed so much for its own programs that banks lacked cash to meet private demand. In addition, the opening to international markets entailed the importation of products, that competed against Ghanaian agricultural production. As shown in the graph 1.8, rice imports have soared since the 1980s and have limited the development of national rice production. Before that, Ghana had decreased its foreign exchange due to the independence and political and economic troubles that shook the country.
Figure 1.8 – The opening of Ghana to international trade in 1983 and its impact on rice imports (from FAOSTAT)
In the late 1980s, the government launched a process of democratisation of the political sys- tem, by decentralising, creating district assemblies and authorising the multi-party system. Inflation remained high, around 30 % between 1986 and 1989. National debt increases and debt service wei- ghed more and more heavily. Price control now targeted only a few key products. The IMF intended to eliminate all distortions, especially tariffs and subsidies [51]. In the early 1990s, no purchases of inputs (fertilisers, insecticides) were subsidised anymore, which penalised the poorest farmers.
19 1.1.3.5 Ghana today : ambitious programs to improve food self-sufficiency, education and health, and fight against poverty
The budget deficit remains high because of heavy public expenditures in investments, energy subsidies, public wage increases or debt service. However, there are large inflows of money, such as the 2007 privatisation of Ghana Telecom . Ghana’s hopes in the recently discovered oil resources seem unfounded, the oil benefits would not be able to solve the budget deficit [8]. Inflation of consumer prices remains around 15 to 20 % per year and the Ghana cedi 4 is devalued in comparison to the dollar and the Euro, increasing the trade balance deficit.
The government has launched a program of food and agriculture sectors development (FAS- DEP), acknowledging their importance in the national economy and the fight against poverty. Agriculture extension services have intensified. Inter-professions are structuring to strengthen the agriculture sector on the model of CocoaBoard. Special attention is paid to the North, in the Nor- thern, Upper West and Upper East regions. Some products are considered as strategic and are highly supported : corn, cassava, yams, rice and cowpeas. For these crops, farmers can receive advances in inputs and tractor ploughing services as part of the Block Farms 5 program. The School Feeding Program, started in 2005, aims at improving student attendance and diet by providing balanced meals at school. In this program, food is purchased locally from small producers.
1.2 The Rice Sector Support Project fits into the scheme of the national agriculture development policies
1.2.1 RSSP : strengthening the rice sector to improve food security and incomes of poor farmers
As seen before, rice is considered a priority crop under the FASDEP 6 and the Medium Term Agriculture Sector Investment Plan (METASIP). This is a commodity for which Ghana has a low self-sufficiency. Rice has an important role at the macro level, to reduce Ghana’s dependence on international markets, and in terms of alleviating poverty and improving food security.
The Rice Sector Support Project (RSSP) follows two other projects supported by the French Government, through the Agence Française de Développement : the Lowland Rice Development Project (LRDP) from 1998 to 2003 and Food Security and Rice Producers’ Organisations Pro- ject (FSRPOP) from 2003 to 2008. These projects have had mixed results and RSSP pursues and combines the actions of these two projects to “keep on supporting the rice sector to help address some of the food security needs and poverty thereby enhancing improved the livelihoods of the poor farmers.” [2]. This new project RSSP is carried out in four regions facing malnutrition problems : Northern, Upper East, Upper West and Volta regions. These four regions cover 50 % of the ter- ritory of Ghana. The project was initiated in 2009 for five years with the aim of improving the living standards of poor farmers in northern Ghana (and the Volta region) through the development of sustainable economic activity based on the potential natural to the area.
4. The Ghana cedi is in circulation since July 2007. Ghana cedi is a 10,000 old cedis. 5. This program will be detailed in part III. 6. Food and Agriculture Sector Development Policy 20 RSSP declares three main objectives : – Strengthening the rice value chain in the northern part of Ghana i.e. Northern, Upper East – Strengthening the national organisation of the rice sector by providing support to the Ghana Rice Inter-professional Group (GRIB) – Strengthening research activities on improved production techniques to increase productivity which is adaptable to the natural conditions. To have a better knowledge of the regions to be developed, the Ministry of Food and Agricul- ture has asked for four diagnoses on farming systems in areas concerned by the project. These studies must be a tool for coordinating teams to adapt the project actions to each context and ensure the effectiveness of the project. Production conditions can be very different in all the areas developed by the project and the success of the project will depend heavily on its ability to adapt and change its working methods in different situations encountered. Thus, a typology of production systems in each region could be a useful tool to adjust technical and economic proposals to each context and to establish a set of recommendations taking into account the social changes. The studies should pay particular attention to the place of rice production systems.
1.2.2 An agrarian system diagnosis to understand the situation and adapt the project actions
The diagnosis of an agrarian situation is based on the notion of farming system. In Crises et révolutions agricoles au Burundi [23], H. Cochet defines the agrarian system as follows :
“Enabling to understand the state, at some point of its history, the functioning and the conditions of reproduction of an agrarian society, or of the agriculture sector of a society which would not be only agrarian any longer, the concept of agrarian system includes the mode of exploitation and reproduction of one or several ecosystems, the social relations in production and exchange that have contributed to its creation and its development, as well as global economic and social conditions, especially the system of relative prices, which sets the terms of its integration more or less advanced in the international market.”
M. Dufumier, in Les projets de développement agricole : manuel d’expertise [26], precises that ”the use of the concept of agrarian system can be very useful to identify and systematically characterise the links between the changes in social relations, technical evolutions, and the successive transformations of ecosystems. The key is to identify consistencies or inconsistencies that appear in the joint evolution of ecological, technical and socio-economic variables, without forgetting their relations with political and cultural changes.”
We therefore have to identify and to organise into a hierarchy the ecological, historical, social, economic or political factors that influence the farmers’ choices and determine the evolution of agriculture in a region. The study works on the assumption that farmers have good reasons to act the way they do, according to their interests and their resources. We have to identify these reasons to put forward projects adapted to the needs and interests of different classes of economic actors.
An agrarian system, which consists in a consistent complex at territorial level, can be unders- tood as a combination of production systems, which are themselves combinations of cropping and livestock systems. Still according to H. Cochet, a cropping system is used to design a plot or set of plots cultivated in the same way by the farmer. The system includes the plant(s) that is(are) used, their succession and all the techniques that are applied in a specific schedule and particular soil and 21 climate conditions. The livestock raising system is a tool to understand the way a herd of domestic animals is raised. It includes aspects relating to the composition of the herd (genetics, number of animals, sex-ratio ...), its diet with the corresponding feeding schedule, its management (movements, reproduction, health). At the production unit level, the production system offers an analysis of the specific combination of certain cropping and livestocks raising systems. This combination is set up by the farmer according to the means of production and workforce at his disposal and in accordance with its interests [23].
The diagnosis takes into account all the components of the production systems in the study area (technical, economic, social and environmental), and focuses on their interactions and their dynamics. The method has several distinct stages : 1] zoning, 2] rational sampling, 3] in-depth interviews on farming systems, 4] modelling and final results. The whole analysis is preceded and confronted with a global bibliographical references.
1. Zoning is the product of landscape screening. It is completed by the study of secondary data This screening leads to the analysis of the social boundaries and of the historical background through interviews enables us to report on the agrarian history and precise the zoning. A first typology is drawn according to research hypotheses. 2. Rational sampling aims at selecting a limited sample of farm to interview, according to the previous hypotheses rather than relying upon statistical data to build the sample. Thus, this rational sampling contains a comprehensive set of the production systems that were previously identified, including land tenure and means of production. 3. Surveys (semi-directive and open interviews) enable us to understand the different ways far- mers have to use the available resources and to give us information about the dynamics of agriculture. Interactions between agriculture sector actors are fundamental to understand the factors of change. Firstly, the interviews focus on the farms’ technical assessment, that is to say the characterisation of cropping systems, livestock systems and their combination in the production system. This step helps us to precise the typology. Secondly, economic surveys are conducted to characterise the levels of value added and income of the different categories of farms. 4. For each production system, the technical and economic analysis is intended to create models of farm functioning They enable us to identify opportunities and constraints for the different types of farms. We can also simulate the effects of development projects on the economy of the region.
Through this participative approach, the analysis provides a comprehensive understanding of the agrarian situation that is being studied. Being carried out early in the project, the study enables to adapt the implementation of the project. It can also support the monitoring and evaluation by providing accurate field data to assess the impact of projects on the farms and the economy of the study area.
For this study, the project provided us with a motorcycle and a translator for the last two months. Nine communities were surveyed in the area, in order to have data on the different parts of ecosystems. The study is based on about forty historical interviews and 72 technical and economic interviews, carried out between April and July 2011. These 72 interviews include complete farm surveys and targeted surveys to check and go into detail on some points.
22 1.3 The study area belongs to the Black Volta watershed and is organised around the town of Wa
The study area is located south-east of Wa, the capital of the Upper West Region in northern Ghana (see map 1.9) around a shallow being developed by the project.
Figure 1.9 – Location and presentation of the study area (Design N. Brulard)
1.3.1 The Upper West Region is one of the poorest regions in Ghana
Like the two other regions forming the former Northwest Territories, the Upper West Region was directly influenced by British colonisation for less than one century before the independence. At the beginning of the XXth century, colonial forces intervened mainly to end ethnic conflicts that were devastating northern Ghana. The region was long isolated from direct trade with the colonials. Trade, however, is very old in the region : caravans of merchants had formed a dense network of trade routes, but they carried small-size products with high added value such as gold, salt, livestock or 23 fabrics. The Ashanti played a pivotal role between the colonial and northern populations by filtering the trade flow. They controlled the flow including gold, slaves and livestock in order to hoard a part of the value and maintain their power. In addition, merchants would take Sahel routes to the East of the country. The road through Wa was less crowded. The new varieties introduced in the South from the XVIth century, among them maize, groundnuts and cassava, did not spread in the North until the XIXth century. From 1920, the colonial administration started building roads. Trucks helped in boosting the flows of goods and people, and agriculture products could easily circulate all over the country and between the neighbouring countries. The opening of borders with the 1983 structural adjustment program increased these flows.
The Upper West Region is now one of the poorest regions in Ghana. According to the World Food Program, 34 % of the population of the Upper West were food insecure in 2009 and 17 % more were likely to become insecure (as against respectively 5 and 9 % for the whole country). More than 80 % of the population is rural and depends directly on agriculture for their living, as against 56 % across Ghana. The town of Wa, with its 70,000 inhabitants is a major trading place. Local productions are in direct competition with products imported from other parts of West Africa or the rest of the world.
1.3.2 The study area has been chosen to meet the needs of the project
The choice of the boundaries of the study area was relatively simple. To meet the requirements of the project, it includes one of the lowlands to be developed by the project. The northern and eastern boundaries are the hills that define two different watersheds. It seemed interesting to study the different levels of the watershed to be aware of various issues in water management. For time reasons, the study focuses on the upper watershed, without going down to the Volta. The southern boundary is defined by hills lower than the eastern ones, as well as, mainly, by the distance to Wa. After Tanina (map 1.9), the population becomes less dense than near Wa and production systems are different. The fallow period between two crop cycles is longer than in the study area. Hence the choice not to carry out interviews beyond Tanina.
The study area is part of the Black Volta watershed. Access to water for agriculture depends on the position of plots on the different levels of the watershed. Although there are no permanent rivers, the landscape is sculpted by the dense water system that appears in the rainy season. The area is generally gently sloping down westwards : altitudes range from 225 meters at the Black Volta level to 370 meters on the hilltops to the East. These hills mark the boundary between the watersheds of the Black and White Voltas. In the region, the substratum consists in Birrimian granites and, in some places, metamorphic rocks (pelitic series). The soils are acidic, some on lateritic crust, and quite sensitive to water erosion of heavy rain and wind erosion of the harmattan. The soils of the area are very heterogeneous : a mosaic of sandy, gravelly, sandy-loamy and clayey soils, with a rapid spatial variability.
The climate of the area is characterised by a Sudanese-type short rainy season from late May to mid-October. The average rain amount is about 1050 mm per year, but there is a strong intra- and inter-annual variability. 600 millimetres can fall in a year and 1200 the next year. The beginning of the rainy season is highly variable. As can be seen in Figure 1.10 and appendix ??, the intra-annual variability is very important, and it is quite a concern for farmers, especially as regards choosing sowing time . Between December and March, the dry and dusty harmattan blows from the North-east, causing higher temperatures and lower humidity. Most of the farmers we met 24 Figure 1.10 – Rains and temperatures in Wa, average 1952-2010 (from Wa Weather Station data) mentioned climatic changes since the mid-1970s, characterised by a decrease in rainfall amounts and a shorter rainy season. According to the Wa meteorological station, which reports data from 1952, the average rainfall is stable, but the rainy season tends to start later and rains become scarcer and more violent. Presumably, the overall decline in soil fertility due to the population increase makes farmers more vulnerable today to lower yields than they user to be s. Hence a greater sensitivity to climatic variations.
1.3.3 A landscape of mixed farming on uplands and rice cultivation on lowlands
Diagram 1.12 presents the main agro-ecological zones of the study area. By alteration, granitic bedrock provides acid lateritic soils, the lateritic crust appearing on the slopes around Wa and Busa. A first zone can be set on the uplands with lateritic soils (zone 1b). North of the study area, numerous outcrops of large and highly altered granite domes can be observed, which limits urban development and land cultivation. There can be seen forests of tall trees (10 to 20 meters) such as Lannea acida, Acacia polycantha, Haematostaphis barteri, Khaya senegalensis, Terminalia avicennoides or Securinega virosa. Elsewhere in the area, these trees can also be found, but they are generally younger and scarcer. In the rest of the area, the lateritic crust has been eroded by the water system and uplands are characterized by sandy, gravelly or sandy-loamy (zone 1a).
Figure 1.11 – Schematic representation of the environment use by farmers today, example of a Dagati community (Design : N. Brulard)
25 Figure 1.12 – Current zoning of the study area today (Design N. Brulard)
Nowadays, the plant cover is savannah, enriched in certain species of trees. Shea (Vitellaria paradoxa) and dawadawa trees (Parkia biglobosa) have been kept for their many products (they are also pyrophilic and then have a natural resistance to bush fires). They form an agro-forestry park, homogeneous in size and age, the trees being spaced out by 15 to 30 meters. Fodder trees also are preserved during the clearing, like Pterocarpus erinaceus and Afzelia africana. The herbaceous cover is dominated by Andropogon sp. and Cymbopogon sp.. Fallows are herbaceous and shrubby. In both areas, soils are a few feet deep and can be easily eroded. A great variety of tubers, cereals, legumes and fruit are grown on these lands. Unlike what can be seen in zone 1a, cassava predominates over yams in zone 1b, as it can grow on less fertile soils. The villages 7 are traditionally settled on uplands, usually on hill flanks (this situation allows easy access to water without being threatened by floods).
Lowlands (zone 2a) can be flooded at the end of the rainy season. Elevation differences are quite small between the lowlands and uplands, in the order of few tens of meters. Lowlands are not much steep-sided around the narrow riverbed of the watercourse. Because of colluvia (to a lesser extent alluvia) deposit from uplands, lowland are the more fertile areas. Soils are often over one meter deep. The silty-clayey surface horizon often has a pH below 5, while the pH is slightly less acidic in the lower sandy-loamy horizons. A good soil moisture, due to the topography and soil type, allows a longer growing period than on uplands. According to their position in the landscape and the rainfall pattern, shallows 8 can bee flooded for some weeks or not flooded at all. In some areas
7. Community and village are here used as synonyms. In the past, the village would be organized around the central authority of lineage heads. Similarities between the lineages would be strong. Nowadays, social differences between members of a community are wide, there is no more common organization of everyday life. 8. From now on, lowland and shallow are used as synonyms.
26 Figure 1.13 – Maize grown under a Dawadawa-Shea agroforestry parkland (zone 1a) (N. Brulard, July 2011)
Figure 1.14 – Partially ploughed shallow (zone 2a). In the background, the agroforestry parkland on uplands (N. Brulard, May 2011) of lowlands, the water table is shallow and farmers can practice off-season cultivation, especially dry season gardening (zone 2b). General soil acidity makes little phosphorus available to plants.
The last zone is the area of influence of Wa, which shows a rapid growth. This development has an obvious impact on the study area and it is a major factor of the evolution of the production systems. The area can be divided into two sub-zones : the 3a zone corresponds to Wa city itself and the 3b zone is the peri-urban area under direct influence of the city 9.
As a conclusion, the study area is located near the Upper West Region capital. It is part of the Black Volta watershed and is characterized by a landscape of uplands, where people farm under agroforestry parkland, and shallows where rice cultivation predominates. We will now focus
9. Wa urban agriculture, mainly livestock raising and gardens, has not been studied.
27 on understanding the diversity in the modes of environment use that have shaped this landscape in the recent history.
Figure 1.15 – Peri-urban landscape : farm lands are bought by wealthy people from Wa (N. Brulard, July 2011).
28 2 The gap between production systems has widened during the last decades
Identifying the historical factors of production system differentiation makes it possible to un- derstand the current and future dynamics of the agricultural development in the region.
2.1 The early XXth century agrarian system : slash-and-burn agriculture on the uplands
Since the arrival of the European colonials, efforts to develop agriculture have focused on export productions in the South. The North had only indirectly benefited from this development, thanks to the youngsters who would work in the South during the dry season and bring back the needed know-how and the technologies.
Upland light soils were suited to slash-and-burn cultivation that was practised in the first half of XXth century. Among all the community lands, farmers cultivated a field for three to five years before clearing a new place. A ten to fifty-year fallow period restored soil fertility before a new cultivation. The fallow had no role in weed control as a grass cover was still present. The fallow was used to accumulate the biomass that was partly mineralised during the burning. The burning contributed to soil alkalinisation and thus made the phosphorus bio-available. Farmers selectively cleared the field to cultivate : some trees were preserved for the food, the medicine or the crafts material they could provide. Among them, shea trees and dawadawa trees were quite important. After a fallow period, yams were the first crop and they were planted in 50 to 90 cm high mounts. Mounts are more suitable than ridges in the context of a fallow since they can be erected between the stumps, roots and trunks. Cereal such as millet -Pennisetum glaucum- or sorghum -Sorghum bicolor-, and cassava were often planted in mix-cropping with yams. After the harvest, smaller mounts were erected to sow cowpea, millet, sorghum, bambara beans and sometimes an old groundnut variety. Short-duration pulses (3.5 months) were planted to be harvested before heavy rains, because risks due to insects and diseases were higher during that period. This mix-cropping was maintained for two to four years as long as the yields were satisfactory. Maize and vegetables were grown in the gardens near the houses and received waste water and household refuse for their growth. As we can see in appendix A.1 , manual tools were poorly differentiated. A short-handled hoe was used for soil preparation – ploughing, seedbed preparation or mounting - and for weeding. Once worn out, it was used for sowing and weeding. Cutlasses were used to cut down trees, but also for planting. The products were transported only by head porterage.
Only a few people farmed in the lowlands. Seeds of local varieties of rice (O. Glaberrina) would easily fall on the ground before or during the harvest. In addition, having good yields in a flooded rice system was quite uncertain. Rice was sown directly (it was not nursed) in the shallows at the beginning of the rainy season and then grew as the water rose (up to 40 cm high in August- September). No infrastructures of water management and control were built, so that the risk of a fast water rising destroying the crop was real. Rice dried in the field and a late water subsiding could
29 Figure 2.1 – Zoning of the study area before 1950 (Design N. Brulard) delay the harvest and increase the losses caused by birds 1. In addition, land preparation was longer and more painful on clayey soils than on uplands. Only the wealthiest families could grow rice, thanks to a favourable workers/consumers ratio. Rice was socially valuable because it was consumed mainly at funerals and religious ceremonies. If they were poorly farmed, lowlands were used for gathering of food and medicine and for animal grazing.
All families raised some fowls, a small herd of goats and/or sheep and sometimes a few heads of cattle. Some families owned large herds of several dozen heads of cattle (category A1 in figure 2.3). Animals grazed during the day on unfarmed land, looked after by a young boy of the family. At night, they were parked, tied or locked up near the house. The only fertility transfers were towards the gardens. On crop land, the reproduction of fertility was achieved through the fallow period, and not through animal faeces. Cattle was eaten only for ceremonies whereas poultry was part of the family’s food. Selling goats and sheep enabled to buy farm inputs or food for the family. Their meat was regularly consumed by the family, even keeping sheep for special occasions. Hunting, fishing and gathering supplemented the diet. Agriculture was self-consumption-oriented and cash crops were poorly developed. Trade was mainly at local scale, notably by barter, in the markets of each community. During the dry season, many young people went South and worked in the plantations (cocoa, pineapple), mines and construction sites, to bring back money on the family farm.
One active person could farm about 1 acre (0.4 ha) every year : 1/4 to 1/3 of an acre with tubers-cereals mix-cropping, and 1/2 to 3/4 of an acre with legume-cereals mix-cropping. His annual production of about one ton of cereals, legumes and tubers could feed three to five people. To that
1. Rice was harvested dry and brittle. A direct milling would produce a lot of broken rice [20]. As a result, rice is almost always parboiled, whether by women on the farm, by traders or by the final buyers. 30 Figure 2.2 – Schematic representation of the territory organisation before 1950 (Design N. Brulard) must be added the products of hunting, fishing and gathering. Trees satisfied many dietary needs. Still today, dawadawa seeds are crushed and fermented to make a condiment paste rich in proteins and micro-nutrients. After roasting and grinding, sheanuts produce butter which is the basic fat throughout the year.
The village was organised as a community, in a self-sufficiency economy. The basic production unit is the patrilineal lineage, under the authority of the head of the lineage, who was often the eldest. He would choose the land to clear and farm, and organise of his descendants’ work. He was also responsible for the storage and the distribution of the harvest among the members of the lineage. This was an anti-random system, by the pooling of labour and products. When size the lineage or the community became too important as regarded the environment capacity, the lineage was segmented. Some young people went in search of new lands to farm from the old community . Thus, Bamahu was created at the end of the XIXth century by families from Busa, and Kampaha around 1960 by families from Wa who had not enough land anymore (maps 2.1 and 1.12). Some families came from farther away to find land. Among them, Dagati families (category A3) came from the North of the Upper West Region. This system of lineage segmentation maintained a population density below 10 inhabitants/km², compatible with the capacity of the slash-and-burn system.
Initially, community lands were not allocated. For practical reasons, farmers cultivated next to their houses and they established lineage sections, under the authority of the chief of the land. The chief of the land 2 (tendana or tendanba) was also the arbitrator of land conflicts between the leaders of different lineages. The landowners lived in the oldest Wale communities such as Sing, Danko, Boli, Busa and Bihie. A lineage head could allow families or communities from other areas to farm on his land. Historically, the study area has been dominated by the Wale ethnic group, now predominantly Muslim. When landless families wanted to farm on an already allocated land, they asked permission from the concerned lineage head for the land. The right to settle and farm was given for life and heritable in exchange for a few bowls of cereal a year when the harvest was good. A relationship of dependence towards the landowner was thus maintained. All the inhabitants of Bamahu and Kampaha were tenants. The two Dagati communities of the study area (Kolikpara and Kunfabiala) were also composed of migrants who exploited lands owned by Sing and Boli people. When new families arrived, they had little capital and workforce, so they were more vulnerable. However, the land was not a limit and no important rent had to be paid. As a consequence, landlords and tenants had similar production systems. The size could vary between the farms, depending mainly on the availability of labour. The possession of large herds and lowland farming were the main differences
2. The chief of the land and the chief of the village are two separate functions. The former ruled on disagreements over land uses and sections boundaries. The village chief, which was a more recent function, had a social role. He had to solve everyday life disputes and to enforce the rules of the community. The two leaders were chosen in two different lineages or ethnic groups.
31 Figure 2.3 – Historical evolution of the production systems (Design N. Brulard) 32 between the farms. But, within the three identified major categories in the early XXth century, small differences in land, capital or workforce could be the basis for important future economic differences.
2.2 The 1960-1983 period : the modernisation of agriculture was intended and supported by the government
Nkrumah’s government intended to develop Ghana’s economy, notably by mechanising agri- culture. To stimulate large-scale production, the government opened up state farms that employed local farmers. One of them was located between Bamahu and Kunfabiala, but it was quickly aban- doned owing to its disappointing results. Various factors altered the technical, social and economic functioning of the communities, they are summarised in figure 2.5 on page 35.
2.2.1 Population growth impaired the tenure system and fertility repro- duction
The process of lineage segmentation could not compensate indefinitely for the population growth. The youngsters of the lineage were looking for news lands nearby their parents’ community, to find a familiar ecosystem to exploit and enjoy the support of the lineage in case of any problem. When they could not find free lands in the vicinity, they had to go further and further. For young people from a lineage of landowners, it became risky to go in the wild and to loose the status of landowner. Moreover, the city of Wa was growing and people could find there the goods and services they were starting to look for outside the community economy. In the late 1950s, lineage segmentation had decreased significantly and many young people had decided to stay under the authority of the head of the lineage.
Figure 2.4 – Changes in community size and population density in the study area (data from the Department of Statistics)
Population growth in the study area was accelerating as shown in the graph 2.4. The population raised by 1.5 to 3 % per year in the communities. The then practised slash-and-burn system could no longer feed the growing number of community members and this caused rural exodus to Wa . The 33 population of Wa increased by 8 % per year (both by natural growth and migrations) to become the largest city in the region. Land became a valuable resource that owners no longer wanted to let, to be sure not to loose it. No new community had established in the area since 1965, and newcomers found it difficult to access to a land. The slash-and-burn system persisted with some adaptations. The farms with a high consumer/surface unit ratio had to reduce fallow duration between two crop cycles, so that fertility was less and less reproduced. As a consequence, the amount of available biomass had reduced and the alkalinisation was less effective during the burning. These processes led to a downward trend in yields. It has gave the peasants a feeling of a climatic change from the late 1970s. Heavy rains had increased erosion and leaching on degraded soils and droughts affected the most vulnerable farms.
2.2.2 The moto-mechanisation of agriculture under Nkrumah’s regime allow the landowners to increase their farmed acreage
Moto-mechanisation increased the pressure on the land. In the mid-1960s, Nkrumah’s govern- ment intended to develop the country’s agriculture with moto-mechanisation. Ploughing services were created. Almost all tractors, in 1965 as well as today, were owned by institutions or private non-farmer owners. As a result, many tractors were parked in Wa and remote communities had more difficulties to access to them. Similarly most of the mechanics were based in Wa. Clearing and ploughing by hand was a work peak depending on rainfalls. Farmers had to wait for the first rains so that soils were not too compacted, but soil preparation had to be finished before the heavy rains that weighted the soils down. Thus, tractor ploughing enabled farmers to increase the farmed acreage. Ploughing duration could be divided by ten using a tractor, and tractor ploughing enabled a better weed destruction. It also encouraged to increase the lowland acreage, given that manual ploughing was more trying there than on uplands.
The development of tractor ploughing led to the end of the ridging and mounting of all the crops, yams being the only crop to be still mounted. Yet, this process of fertility concentration was useful in the context of the study area. Tractors also participated in the transformation of fallows and agroforestry parkland : the reduction of fallow duration and tractor ploughing limited the renewal of shea and dawadawa trees. Thus, while the shea-dawadawa agroforestry parkland was gradually replacing fallows in the fertility reproduction, it was weakened by this change in cultural practices. In addition, harrows were rarely used because tractor services were expensive and farmers preferred to pay only for ploughing services. In these agroforestry systems, the small isolated plots did not enable the massive development of moto-mechanisation, as hoped for by the government. Still today, the Ministry of Agriculture has many unused drilling machines, combine harvestors and other tools, that cannot be used given the land and economic structure of the farms.
2.2.3 The development of lowland rice and upland cotton
Rice cultivation spread in lowlands, because of upland saturation and productivity gains made possible by tractors and new varieties. As a consequence, the relative availability of rice had greatly increased in comparison to other crops. Rice became a valuable cash crop. Meanwhile, maize acreage increased at the expense of yams. Tubers required fertile land and were less productive with short- term fallows. Mix-cropping was simplified and new rotations were set up, including short fallow periods and alternations between tubers, cereals and legumes. Some of these rotations are still practised and will be described with the archetypes.
34 Figure 2.5 – Main technical and social factors influencing agricultural development in the area (Design N. Brulard) 35 Figure 2.6 shows the relative prices evolution for a ton of some products 3. Over the last decades, rice has become more attractive than yam, sorghum, millet and corn. This was partly due to technical innovations in lowland rice cultivation. But this was also linked to declining upland productivity on dry fields, because of the reduction of the fallow period. The lower availability of sorghum and maize caused a change in diet habits. The balls of yam, cassava or maize paste still occupied an important place in the diet, but rice had now been democratised and used on a daily basis to feed the family. This cereal has the advantage of being faster to cook than traditional dishes. Demand in rice rose faster, and farmers were not able to increase their production as much . However, these national data should be used with caution as they mask a huge heterogeneity between regions. Yet, the data collected on the field seem consistent with the national trend in relative prices.
In the mid-1970s, national companies developed cotton production in the North. Producers were offered tractor services, seeds, fertilisers and insecticides. At the harvest time, the company would buy their whole production, after subtraction of the advanced inputs. Payment was made partly in kind and participated in the community’s development. Farmers were paid in corrugated iron sheets, tools, bicycles, etc. As to cotton cultivation, producers had to group their plots together to have one single parcel to plough. However, families farmed independently. Cotton cultivation was the first experience of “modern agriculture” for many farmers. They discovered the technique of sowing in line that is now spread for maize, as well as the use of fertilisers and pesticides. Cotton was often grown as the rotation head, so that farmers would benefit from the field preparation with a tractor and a possible precedent effect on following crops (usually maize). Some farmers diverted a part of the provided fertilisers for staple crops. We can consider that one third of the farms were involved in cotton cultivation. The owners of large farms were more likely to bring large acreages together and to access to enough workforce to grow cotton. Cotton cultivation ceased in the early 2000s, when the Ghana Cotton Company Ltd went bankrupt. Private companies are trying to revive cotton production in northern Ghana, but they are not yet present in the study area.
The Savannah Agriculture Research Institute (SARI) and other research institutions - worked on selecting new varieties of rice, maize, groundnuts and sorghum. Cassava had also benefited from genetic selection and most of the farmers now cultivated a six-to seven-month variety, instead of one- to two-years-old varieties. During the next decades, new varieties made it possible to increase the farmed acreages and to maintain or raise the yields in a general context of low fertility. Farmers exchanged seeds , so that identifying the varieties they used is quite difficult.
2.2.4 Farmers who could not increase their acreage tried to intensity their production per surface unit
Agriculture started to be considered as a source of cash income and not not only oriented towards consumption. Landowners accepted fewer new tenants and made the extension of tenant’s farms harder. Farmers started massive tree plantations in the fields (mainly mango and cashew trees). While these trees were initially only planted in the courtyards and gardens, they could now be planted in the fields that were now permanently allocated to a lineage. Depending on the land division within lineage members, not everyone could access to the same resources. The eldest brother would be favoured at inheritance time. Thus, among the big landowners A1, the biggest ones had been able to invest in tractor services, new varieties and fertilisers without reducing fallow duration
3. We could not access to the information to represent the evolution of prices in constant cedis. We have therefore chosen to report all prices to the average annual price of the main sources of calories in the study area (yams, cassava, rice, maize, millet, sorghum). 36 Figure 2.6 – Relative prices evolution in Ghana (from FAO date [9], arbitrary units per ton of product.)
37 or decapitalising the cattle. They made up the production system B1. Smaller landowners could not invest as much and had to decapitalise cattle to buy food and inputs during the bad years (production system B2). Among the peasants of category A2, some landowners (type B5) had a significant investment capacity. They invested and specialised in cash crops, such as maize, cotton, groundnuts on uplands and rice mix-cropped with maize in lowlands. The initial investment was profitable and they could increase their acreage as they restored a small herd. Labour was for them the main limiting factor and they often had to hire daily workers. Other landowners maintained a traditional slash-and-burn system on uplands, and started to farm lowland rice (type B4). When land divisions occurred within types A1 and A2 lineages, the youngest brother could only inherit uplands, like some migrants with whom they made up the production system B7.
In the small farms, agroforestry parkland combined with fallow for the fertility reproduction. The shea taproot enabled fertility transfers from deep horizons, while dawadawa trees fixed atmos- pheric nitrogen in their root nodules. Paradoxically, the agroforestry parkland began to play a major role in the reproduction of fertility when the development of tractor ploughing limited its renewal by less selective clearing.
2.2.5 The development of state schools in the 1960s and the increase of the social differentiation
Owning land was getting more and more difficult for newcomers and tenants’ children because of the rapid increase in population, whereas new techniques enabled an increase of the farmed acreage per worker for who could afford them. type A1 landowners hardly accepted new tenants on their land, to be sure to have enough land to feed the lineage and to increase the production thanks to these new techniques (type A2 landowners had smaller farms and they usually accepted fewer tenants). New rice varieties raised the interest for lowlands and new tenants could often only farm uplands (production system B7). The development of state schools in the 1960s also influenced the differentiation of the production systems. Most children were schooled in the early 1970s and they could not look after the animals any longer. Livestock owners who could afford it (types B1, B2, B5) hired a Fulani, a nomadic herder with no flock. He would take care of the animals in return for a fee in cash and in kind : profits from cow milk sales, bags of maize, the right to settle and to farm temporarily on the owners’ land, the right to save the faeces to fertilise the farm. Fulanis absorbed a great part of the livestock’s value added, as it will be explained in the description of the Fulani production system SP11. Families who could not afford the services of a Fulani let the animals roam freely, but the animals were more likely to get hurt or stolen. Indeed, economic development has not followed Wa’s demographic development. Unemployed people could tend to steal animals in the surrounding communities to sell them on the market, with the help of community members. The phenomenon was very important and almost all farmers suffered suffered serious robberies, often of the whole herd. People hiring Fulanis generally suffered fewer losses, but sometimes the cowherd himself left with the herd. To conclude on livestock, the numbers of sheep, goats and cattle decreased in comparison with the previous period. The expansion of farm acreage at the expense of fallows reduced the grazing areas, resulting in weaker animals. The overall decline in soil fertility forced the poorest peasants to decapitalise their livestock.
38 2.3 The 1983-1995 period is characterised by the liberalisa- tion of the economy and cuts in public support
Economy recovery programs initiated by Rawlings’ government resulted in a decrease of public supports. Fertilisers and pesticides were no longer supported. With the borders opening, Wa became the central trade place in the Upper West Region. Products from the sub-continent and the world were exchanged, in direct competition with local products. Like the national economy, the economy of communities is increasingly open to the outer world. The graph 1.8 on page 19 illustrates this radical change with the boom of rice imports in 1983. However, many NGOs initiated or continued development projects in the region.
2.3.1 Animal traction was a profitable alternative to tractors
Some NGOs introduced animal traction in the region in the 1990s. A pair of local oxen was hitched to a one-ploughshare plough or a cart. Ox ploughing cost half the price of tractor services. It was agronomically interesting, since it limited erosion more than tractors. Some farmers were offered a pair of oxen and the adapted tools for participating in a project, but most of the current ox owners invested in them. Besides the initial investment, taking care of the oxen was a problem. Training oxen for farm works requested regular work for one year, and it has to be so throughout the animal’s life. But farmers had no time to make the oxen work ; those who did not have enough workforce could not afford to have oxen. Those who bought oxen, like type SP1 and SP7b farms , could have extra income by ploughing other farmers’ lands. The cart was also very useful to carry the production to the house or the faeces to the fields. Animal traction had the advantage of relocating production tools. The peasants could use them when they wished and were not dependent on tractors owners during the ploughing season.
2.3.2 Dry season gardens first interested the farms with limited capital and workforce
The introduction of the dry season garden technique (DSG) provided an important source of income to the benefiting families. Developed from 1975 on around Busa and Bihie by an NGO, the gardens spread to Sing from 1995 on. Wells were dug to reach the two to three metre deep water so as to produce off-season vegetables. The technique had been known in Sing since its introduction in Busa, but only a few farmers applied it. Indeed, the difference in productivity was in favour of upland crops for those whose land was not a limit. From 1995 on, all the suited shallows were gardened. Areas with water close to ground level are rare in the study area, and the plot distribution was made by the chief of the land. The study failed to find out how the plots were “bought”, but they were all 1/4 to 1/8 of an acre large (0.05 to 0.1 ha). They have often been divided since then among the descendants of the former farmers. Landowners could have access to dry season gardens, but we notice a differentiation as regards inheritance. To keep the size consistent with the different cropping systems, lands were often distributed unequally among the heirs. Thus, systems B1 and B2 farmers did not cultivate DSG, which could be transmitted to young people who had inherited no livestock (like in the SP3 production system). Tenants had also access to the gardens when owners had no economic interest in DSG. Some of the landowners of type B5 had access to little or not flooded lowlands during the rainy season. They could develop an input and labour intensive cropping system to produce off-season tomatoes on a large scale. They made up the SP6 production system 39 , characterised by a (maize/tomato)2 years//rice+maize//fallow rotation. The development of dry season gardens coincided with the construction of Busa dam by the government, followed in 2004 by Sing dam. Although irrigation infrastructures can extend the zone of DSG, they are not essential to them. Sing Dam was built on a former DSG area without improving the productivity of the gardens. Another garden area was located in a shallow with no dam.
Many trees were planted in the dry season gardens. Banana, plantain or pawpaw trees benefited from soil moisture. Their fruits were part of the family diet. However, the gardens were often remote from the villages and the production could easily be looted.
2.3.3 These evolutions turn the community organisation upside down
The lineage structure were weakened by the rapid demographic growth, the farming system specialisation and the recourse to investments. Young educated people did not want to be ruled by the elders of a lineage composed of many generations. For the landowners who adopted new production systems (B5 type) and those who inherited of a limited acreage (B7 type), the production unit was the extended family 4. Big landowners (B1, B2, B4) kept practising the traditional slash-and- burn system and the lineage head retained a major role Among the tenants, the production unit is the nuclear family, sometimes hosting an unmarried brother The drilling of a bore hole in each community and the development of mechanical mills gave free time for women. Some of them were able to grow cash crops, such as groundnuts or bambara beans on a plot on the family farm. With the spread of the nuclear family model, some women happened to become farm operators after their husband’s death or because he works in town. They farmed land they did not own, sometimes helped by their children (SP9 production system). Tenant farms were not always able to feed the whole family. Some family members, men and women, had to work for other farmers to top up their income.
From the beginning of the century, Islam and Christianity had spread throughout the region and had supplanted or combined with animism. Wa people had massively adopted Islam, while the Dagatis had become Christians. Religious leaders saw their power increase in the community and could be more important that traditional chiefs. Turning to Islam led to progressively giving up pig raising within Wale communities. Dagati farms (SP10) still included pig raising. This system had also recently evolved with the development of upland tomato farms near the houses. Unlike dense Wale communities, Dagati villages were characterised by scattered settlements. The fields surrounding the houses were not farmed like more distant fields. They could be farmed more intensively and regularly and could be better protected from thieves and animals.
2.4 The 1995-present period : agriculture is a means of al- leviating poverty and food dependence
The government has strengthened its supports to the agriculture sector with programs such as the Block Farms and projects like RSSP. The role of Agriculture extension agents has also been reinforced. Unfortunately, it often comes down to selling technical packages to farmers.
4. The nuclear family hosts relatives as well as brothers, sisters, nephews, etc.
40 2.4.1 New plants, supported by governmental and NGO programs, are integrated in the production systems
Soya has been recently introduced in the study area by NGOs and industrialists. Yields are really variable, as suitable rhizobia for this new legume are not often present in the soils. On small acreages, the farmers do not want to risk growing soya because the crop is less profitable per surface unit than cowpeas or groundnuts. In the same way, those who experience a work peak at the period of soya harvesting can not cultivate it. The harvest period is quite short and the pods open in the field if they are too dry. On the contrary, big farms consider soya as a way to increase farmed acreage, because soya requires fewer man-days than other legumes. It applies to the SP1 and SP2 types as well as the biggest farmers of the B3 type forming the SP3a production system, and the SP4, SP6 and SP7 types . Type SP3c farmers, stemmed from the B3 type, diversify their upland crops, notably by the inclusion of soya, and abandon lowland farming. Some farmers have started to use soya as green manure before growing maize or yams. Indeed, fertilisers are quite expensive and few peasants can afford them. Even if the government subsidises more than 50% of their price, fertilisers remain expensive and their price has been multiplied by three in constant currency since 2000. This explosion in prices encourages farmers to participate in the input advance programs. For instance, MOFA launched the Block Farms program in 2010 : farmers have to form groups of joined plots for which MOFA provides tractor services, selected seeds of rice, maize or soya, and fertilisers. Farmers have to refund the ministry in kind or in cash after the harvest with no interests. Some NGOs propose the same kind of contracts. This system has the advantage of enabling poor farmers to make the best of their workforce. But it can also lead farmers to court if the harvest is so bad they cannot refund. Moreover, the current land tenure system makes it hard for small farmers to gather sufficient acreage, and the main beneficiaries of Block Farms are the biggest farmers.
2.4.2 The recent urban development increases social differentiation
The development of Wa has provided a market to sell the increasing production of surrounding farms, as well as job opportunities. As many institutions and NGO are based in Wa, many services, such as banking or higher education are available there. The farmers around Wa also have greater chances to benefit from a project. However, the rapid urban growth nibbles farm lands for building or sand and gravel mining.
The UDS (University for Development Studies)between Bamahu and Kunfabiala has wreaked havoc among the surrounding farms. Bamahu, Kunfabiala and Kolikapara farmers are tenants. The University has arranged its access to land with the landowners. Some tenants in different production systems (SP3a, SP3c, SP7, SP10) have been expelled from the land they farmed with no compen- sation. They are now allowed to cultivate small plots on the UDS campus, but they have to ask every year to know where to farm the year after. In addition, their crops can be destroyed at any time if the UDS intends to start a project or an experimental plot. These farmers form the precarious SP8a/b/c/d categories . The differences between the precarious types depends on the kind of land they can have access to every year. To top up their income, family members have to work outside the farm. Some farmers are turning to livestock raising to get a sufficient income.
Wa development and the UDS establishment have had other major consequences in the study areas. Near the town and the campus, crop and tree production is regularly pillaged. Children of long settled tenants can hardly have their rights recognised and can only obtain annual leases. The landowners do not want to risk letting their lands to tenants who could claim for them in case of a reform of the land tenure system (at a national scale or at the chiefs of land scale). Moreover, finding 41 an accommodation in Wa is harder and harder and wealthy people prefer to build on distant farm lands. Many accommodations are also built around the UDS campus to host the 5,000 students. SP1 and SP2 landowners have more interest in investing in construction than in agriculture. As a consequence, for the last few years young tenants who want to build their houses have to buy the plot. A quarter of an acre can cost around 4,000 cedis. Young people have to go South to work and bring back money that cannot be invested in the improvement of agriculture practices. On the contrary, the landowners who sell lands have started to invest in tractors. Land selling and tractor buying have not been considered in this study, because this recent phenomenons presently only concern a few people But the social differentiation we can see may be nothing in comparison to what it could be in a few years if this trend continues.
We are now going to study the different production systems that have been identified in the study area.
2.5 The current production systems
Table 2.7 summarises the ranges of acreage and the economic results for the identified produc- tion systems. It also gives an idea of the relative importance of each farm type in terms of number of farms and exploited acreage. These data are orders of magnitude from the interviews and are not based on a thorough statistical analysis.
We have chosen to present the categories in an order that differs from the one in figure 2.3, to make it easier to understand the different cropping and livestock raising systems. We will try to describe progressively the whole agrarian system. Unless otherwise stated, all the expressed yields are net yields. For each type a sheet will be presented summarising the main characteristics of the production system.
2.5.1 Methodology
Economic results are based on a technical modelling of the farm functioning, from interview data. We have to understand in-depth how every cropping or livestock system is managed before analysing the practical details of their combination. Are they in competition or supplementary in the use of land, capital or workforce ? How do the farmers organise their productions and what are the reasons for their choices ? Using a detailed modelling of the cropping and livestock, we can define different farm categories according to their resources and the farmers’ technical choices. These modelled categories make up the production systems.
Economic modelling stems from technical modelling, by affecting prices to all the farm inputs and outputs. The prices depend on the season, the relative scarcity of a product, the marketing conditions, the distance from farms to markets, etc. Appendix A.2 presents intra-annual producer price variations for some crops. Several indicators are calculated for each cropping or livestock system.
- The gross product (GP) corresponds to the value of final productions. It does not take into account intermediary productions that are consumed during the production process. - The intermediate consumptions (IC) are the goods and services destroyed or transfor- med during the production process.
42 Figure 2.7 – Structures, economic results and importance of the different farming systems
- The gross value added (GVA) is the difference between the gross product and the sum of intermediate consumptions of goods and services for a given period [26]. It is calculated for a cropping system, a livestock raising system or a production system as a whole. Hiring costs are not subtracted from the gross product to obtain the gross value added. - The net value added (NVA) corresponds to the creation of wealth by a farm. It is obtai- ned by subtracting from the gross value added equipment depreciations, which correspond to the wear on buildings and tools used in the production process. It is calculated for the whole farm and per worker. Both family workers and hired labourers are taken into account. When daily labourers are involved, their number is converted in full-time equivalents, according to the minimum number of needed workers during the work peaks.
The farm income is the difference between the gross product of a farm and all the fixed and variable expenses for a given period. It corresponds to the distribution of the value added among the different economic actors. From the net value added are subtracted the hired labourers’ wages, the taxes, the rents to pay as well as the credit refunds. If need be, rents, subsidies and other agriculture incomes may be added. In the study area, we have chosen to take also into account the incomes from daily labour and non agricultural activities, given that they finance farm inputs and enable many farms to subsist. The income is also calculated per family worker.
43 The farm income is compared to a survival threshold. This threshold corresponds to the minimum income to feed oneself and to support basic health, housing and education expenditures for a worker and the people he has to support (young children, old parents, non working brothers and sisters). According to the data collected during the interviews, the survival threshold is estimated around 600 cedis per worker and per year. As a comparison, the Ghanaian minimum salary is 80 cedis per month, that is 960 cedis per year. But the unemployment rate is high around Wa and most people can not get such a salary. Finding a job in Wa is hard and many peasants keep on farming on their loss-making farms. Their children go into farming while working in Wa.
Farm archetypes are defined by a minimum and a maximum acreage per worker, outside which it can not cannot be found. The lower bound is economic : under this acreage, farmers cannot have a sufficient income. Farmers can have incomes under the survival threshold, but their children are likely not to take over the farms in these conditions and to prefer finding an even precarious job in town. The upper bound is technical : above this limit, farmers have to invest in new tools to increase their productivity. They have to change their level of equipment, and they develop a different production system. Livestock is considered as a capital and it is raised on fallow lands, whoever is the tenant or the owner of the land. Thus, it is not linked to a surface and does not impact lower and upper bounds. To make things clearer, the gross value added composition is presented on a graph for each of the identified archetypes. Every sub-system share (namely livestock raising, gathering, dry and rainy seasons gardens, lowland and upland crops) is represented for the two farm sizes corresponding to the two bounds. The gross value added range then appears. Figures 2.27, 2.28 et 2.29 from page 85 permit a comparison of the economic results of the production systems.
44 2.5.2 Dagati farms with pig raising and backyard fields (SP10)
Dagati people are from the North of the Upper West Region, spanning Burkina Faso and Ghana. They came to the study area in the first half of the XXth century, looking for lands to farm. Two communities have established on lands owned by Wale people : Kolikpara and Kunfabiala. Dagatis have predominantly adopted Christianity and, unlike Wale people, they raise pigs and often brew sorghum beer. Dagati villages are characterised by a scattered settlement. Two main categories of farms can be found in the Dagati communities : the tenant farms, to be describe here, and SP8 small precarious farms, that will be detailed later.
The farms are characterised by three rotations practised in three parts of the ecosystem, and by the great care in livestock raising. The oldest rotation is a yam+sorghum//groundnut+sorghum/ /cowpea+sorghum//fallow 3 years rotation on uplands. Land is cleared using cutlasses and hoes, and the branches and grass heaps are burnt on the field. A deep hoe ploughing is carried out to erect mounts, in which around 1,500 yam tubers are planted per acre, between November and February. The short hoe handle (about 75 cm) makes an acute angle with the blade (appendix A.1) ; it is suitable for turning the soil over and erecting mounts, by helping to lift clods. Mounting provides the tubers with a porous soil that favours root development and limits capillarity water rising. During the rainy season, mounts also limit the risk of rotting of the tubers that are stored within. Owing to deep ploughing, deep horizons are surfaced and are progressively mineralised in favour of tuber growth. About 2,500 tubers can be harvested per acre between August and January. About a hundred man- days are necessary for clearing, mounting and seedling. Theses operations are postponable, they are often carried out by barter work groups. One to three hoe weedings are necessary, using an old hoe with a worn and narrow blade. A mulch of leaves is laid on the top of the mounts at the beginning of the dry season to prevent the young yam stem from being burnt by the sun. Creepers are staked when they come through. Sorghum or millet 5 are sown between the mounts at the end of the dry season and cassava is often planted as plot boundary. An invading weed called strigger tends to reduce sorghum and millet cultivation. The following season, mounts are levelled to sow groundnuts (225 to 330 kg of seeds harvested per acre for 35 kg sown). Groundnut still benefits from the fertility of the fallow and fixes a part of its nitrogen needs. This fixation benefits to sorghum (60 to 250 kg per acre for 10 kg sown). Unshelled groundnut is sold to wholesale traders. The year after, cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) ends the rotation, since it can fix a greater part of its nitrogen needs than groundnut [15]. Insecticides have stabilised and increased cowpea yields from 50 to 150 kg per acre for 7.5 kg sown. The three sprayings take place at flower formation, at blooming and at pod formation. This rotation shows an interesting fertility management, exploiting complementary aspects of tubers, legumes and cereals. It produces more than 400 kg of food per acre, that is equivalent to a gross value added of 6 cedis per man-day.
In the backyard fields, the (maize//maize//tomatoes)2//fallow 5 years rotation is more input intensive. After a five year fallow period, the field is ploughed by a tractor or a pair of oxen, depending on their availability in the village and on the soil conditions. Maize is then sown is line at the density of 10 kg per acre. An worn hoe or a cutlass are used to make a hole in which are laid two seeds. After a first weeding, 20 nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium units are spread per acre, as NPK 15-15-15 fertiliser. They will be completed by 12 nitrogen units at the jointing stage, as sulphate of ammonia laid at every plant base after weeding and ridging . The harvest is made with knives, and many women are usually hired to help. After two years of maize cultivation, ridges are erected to transplant nursed tomatoes. The 10 nitrogen units are spread in two times, as for maize. To
5. If the first crop has grown normally thanks to good soil and climate conditions or to an early sowing, sorghum is preferred to millet. Otherwise, sorghum can be too competitive for light and nutrients and the farmers would rather sow millet. In the modelling, we have considered that mix-cropping was always done with sorghum. Using millet does not modify the results significantly. 45 secure the yields, insecticides are spread three times, the last one taking place during fruit growth. The farmers of this category usually have their own hand sprayers. In some cases, the farmers prefer growing pepper or okro instead of tomatoes. Fruits are sold to wholesale traders for Wa’s market, between 12 and 40 cedis per 35 litre basin. The following five year fallow period has a little role in fertility reproduction, since animals grazing near the houses prevent trees and shrubs from growing. But it has an important sanitary role, especially to reduce nematode pressure. Animal grazing and faeces spreading participate in fertilising the fields. Faeces and household refuse are also used in the small wet-season garden which provides vegetables and leaves for the family.
A non fertilised rice+maize5−7 years//fallow 5 years rotation is practised in the lowlands. Maize is sown by bunches from the first rains in April-May after preparing the soil most often using tractors . After a first weeding three to four weeks later, rice is sown at a density of 20 kg per acre. Maize has to be harvested before August-September rains flood the lowlands. Rice grains dry on the plant after the water has subsided. The farmers do not scare bird during the drying, because the risk of destruction is spread over the many crops to be harvested at the same time. According to the position of the plot in the lowlands, the farmers choose short-duration varieties (three months) if water does not stagnate for a long time, or longer-duration varieties (up to five months) if the shallow remains flooded. 500 kg of rice and 300 kg of maize can be harvested on an acre. While maize can not be stored lossless beyond four months without a post-harvest chemical treatment, rice can be kept until the next farming season. A far as crops are concerned, hired labour represents 20% of total man-days.
Figure 2.8 – Average values added per adult female in the study area (the value added absorbed by the Fulanis when they look after the cattle is represented in orange)
Gathering participates significantly in the value added for the smaller farms. The main products are shea nuts, which are transformed into butter, leaves for cooking and firewood, partly burned into charcoal. These productions are not proportional to the farm acreage : when not enough trees are present on the family land, the women go to other fallow lands to gather. In the same way, animals graze freely on all the village territory during the dry season. During the rainy season, they are either parked and fed or tethered, to prevent them from destroying the crops. No fodder crop nor specific pasture land are devoted to animals in the cropping pattern. That is why the surface ranges only depends on the cropping systems in the modelling (figure 2.20).
46 Livestock raising is an important component of the Dagati production system. Sorghum beer byproducts are used to raise pigs. Their diet is completed during the rainy season by dawadawa pod flour and mill byproducts (flour, bran), as well as plants cut around the pigsties. During the dry season, piglets are free while adults are kept in to avoid injuries and being stolen. These small breeds of pigs are able to dig to find their food. A sow usually gives birth to five piglets a year, but only half of them survive until weaning. Some males are castrated, a few are kept as boars. Animals are sold between six months and four years, depending on family needs and market prices. Around Christmas, traders from the South can offer prices twice as high as usual. Dagati farmers also raise goats. Goats are tethered during the rainy season and fed with yam and cassava peels and leaves during the dry season. Among the poultry, guinea fowls are more profitable than fowls but more delicate to raise (figure 2.8). Young birds are fed with termites and cereals for one month after their birth. Adults only receive little grain twice a day to count them and have them back in the yard. Goats and poultry are occasionally consumed by the family. Guinea fowls eggs are both consumed and marketed.
Dagati families are nuclear families, to which may be added a brother, a sister and nephews and nieces. When old people join the household, they actively participate in the transformation of farm production and in meal preparation. A woman can spend four hours a day cooking for the family. Next to the wet season garden (WSG) which provides the ingredients for the soup, trees have been planted. Mango trees are only present around the houses, because the landowners generally forbid to plant trees in the fields. For a few years, some Moringa oleifera have been planted in the courtyards. Their fruit and leaves are rich in minerals, vitamins and proteins and they can fill in this nutritional need better than most vegetables.
Figure 2.9 – Composition of the value added of the production system SP10
The backyard fields being nearby the house, the farmers can work in and keep an eye on tomato fields every day. Livestock management prevents the animals from destroying the crops, limits risks of robbery and makes the use of faeces easier. This production system differently exploits three parts of the ecosystem, with various levels of workforce and input intensivity. Work schedule is filled in an homogeneous way, so the farmers have little recourse to hired labour. However, most harvests take place from July on and the treasury leave little leeway, especially during the lean period. That is why men plough and weed while women sow, weed and harvest on other farms during the farming season. One of the family members also has a part-time job in town. Children work on the farm on certain evenings and weekends, but they mostly work during school holidays. These factors explain
47 the variations in the number of available family man-days on the work schedule in the summarising sheet.
These farmers cultivate three to twelve acres of the first rotation, two to five acres of the second one, and 0,75 to 1,5 acre of the lowland rotation. The surface range spreads from six to nineteen acres for four family workers. Upland crops contribute for more than the half of the gross value added. Livestock raising comes next, mainly thanks to pigs and guinea fowls. 12% of the value added pay for hired labour. Rents count for almost nothing for farms of this size. Tools are not very differentiatnor expensive, so that it leads to little depreciations. The farmers within this category create a net value added of 550 to 1,000 cedis per worker and per year, and they bring in 650 to 1,200 cedis of income per family worker and per year.
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2.5.3 The big landowners with cattle kept by a Fulani (SP1, SP2) and the small SP4 type landowners
The three following farm categories practise similar cropping systems with the same land tenure conditions.
2.5.3.1 Big landowners with cattle kept by a Fulani – the largest type (SP1)
The SP1 type brings together big Wale landowners, farming 30 to 85 acres 6 and owning up to 220 acres. The lands they do not exploit is put in reserve or are used for livestock grazing. Some of them are let to tenant farmers or, recently, have been sold to urban people to be built. From a social point of view, big landowners are quite close to the traditional family organisation. An old lineage head make his children and grandchildren work on his farm, even if some of them also work outside the farm. The farmers of this category have extended families and can access to an abundant workforce. They turn to daily labourers for 12% of the crop man-days and hire Fulani breeders (SP11 type) to look after their livestock. Thanks to their numerous cattle, sheep and goats, these farmers own an important capital. When they need treasury to solve family problems, the landowners ask for the Fulanis’ advice as to which animal to sell. Thus, they choose a 400, 800 or 1,200 cedi cattle, according to their needs. Males and old females are sold first.
On sandy uplands, groundnuts are grown for four year before leaving the field to fallow for three years. All plots are ploughed using tractors or bullocks , except for yam field. Women are in charge of sowing and harvesting groundnuts. Work groups are formed to carry out work on the different plots. If the work is longer for some plots, additional work can be paid in cash or in kind. Plucking is paid in kind, with three bowls for each basin of unshelled groundnuts plucked (= 10 bowls 7). In the rotation, groundnuts and sorghum are mix-cropped for the four years of cultivation 8 and net yields are respectively 225 and 150 kg per acre. Mix-cropping demands more work per surface unit, increasing the cereal weeding or the legume harvest durations. But fewer acres have to be cleared and ploughed every year and crops can benefit from long-duration fallow fertility. Mix-cropping is also an anti-random system, limiting the effects of climate and sanitary conditions.
On heavier uplands, the yam+sorghum//maize2 years//cowpea+sorghum//soya//sorghum/ /fallow 5 years rotation stems from the one still practised by Dagati people. Fertilisers and a longer fallow period make it possible to extend the duration of the cropping period. Maize is fertilised up to 30 nitrogen units for a net yield of 550 kg per acre. Soya is not fertilised and produces more than 300 kg per acre. This recently introduced crop is less sensitive to insects than cowpeas and does not need to be sprayed. An additional fertilised maize plot is also cultivated, often as part of the Block Farms program.
650 kg of rice and 400 kg of maize can be harvested per cultivated lowland acre, following 9 the rice+maize5 years//fallow 10 years rotation, the crops receiving 30 nitrogen units . Fertilisers are quickly spread and are not laid under each plant. NPK fertiliser is spread at rice tillering time after weeding and sulphate of ammonia around booting (it is often spread in the water when shallows are
6. Farming land includes fallow lands when rotating with the crops. 7. See appendix A.2 for the conversion table 8. Climate, short calendar windows or invading weeds can force the farmers not to sow sorghum or millet with groundnuts 9. The same fertilisers and the same doses are promoted for all the crops. Every farming season, MOFA chooses the fertilisers to subsidise according to market prices.
50 flooded and yield losses can be important). Once dry, rice is harvested with the help of a lot of daily labourers. It is then transported by cart to the farm house to be threshed.
Figure 2.10 – Composition of the value added of the SP1 production system
As shown on figures 2.27 on page 85 and 2.28 on page 86, the farmers of this category do not differ from other farmers as regards the crop value added, with a range of 370 to 730 cedis per worker. But, when livestock raising and gathering are added, these farmers set themselves apart with a value added two to eight times higher than other types. Indeed, livestock raising contributes up to two thirds of the value added. 20 to 50 cows with calves and males (that is a 50 to 160 head herd) and 20 to 40 goats and ewes form an important capital. There is no real link between livestock raising and crop farming. Animals are looked after by a Fulani breeder, and the owners do not benefit from the faeces fertility (the contract conditions between the Fulanis and the cattle owners will be described with the Fulani SP11system). The farmers have a large enough livestock to keep all the young females, only selling males and cull females. Male kids and old goats are regularly sold to buy farm inputs or killed for family consumption. Lambs can be sold, but sheep are often associated with ceremonies and special occasions, such as child births, host welcoming or funerals. Even if they are less prolific than goats, their price can be twice as high as that of a goat , owing to their symbolic value. Cattle is rarely used to invest on the farm. It usually belongs to several lineages : livestock raising could have been initiated by the lineage head’s father or grand-father and animals belong to several brothers and cousins. Only one of them is in charge of the cattle. Cattle are so used to solve family problems : child entering the university, wedding or funeral, health problem, judicial problem, etc. However, the other brothers and cousins do not take part in livestock fees, such as Fulani wages or veterinary fees. These farmers also own two pairs of oxen, so that they can plough some of their crops as well as other farms.
On their lands, the farmers have usually planted two acres of cashew trees. The first years after planting, legumes can be grown between the tree rows ; legume cultivation participates in weed control, for the benefit of the young trees. The following years, weeding and fire-belt upkeep demand ten man-days per acre when the family members are very busy with the crops. Even if cashew nuts can be sold 50 to 65 cedis a 150 litre bag, the farmers do not attach a great importance to cashew production. One of the reason of this disinterest is pillage : people often come to harvest the orchard before the farmer. A second reason is the initial aim of the orchard. Trees are symbols of property, and many farmers plant trees only to secure their property and to maintain building land for their children’s house. Production is not their first objective and they have not try to adjust their work schedule for tree production. Teak plantations are also developing under the influence of MOFA 51 Forestry Commission. They are to produce building pillars or electric pylons. Upkeep work is more limited than for cashew trees, but the return on investment is deferred by 30 years. Only the biggest farms can take a plot off production with no profit for several decades. Finally, some mango trees complete the diet during the dry season. Mangoes are not sold because transportation costs can hardly be refunded.
SP1 type farmers are by far the wealthiest in the study area, with an annual income of 1,600 to 2,100 Ghanaian cedis per family worker. This income is increasing with the selling and the renting of building plots to students and Wa workers. Thus they can afford to buy tractors, so that the landowners can increase their farmed acreage reducing their ploughing fees. They start practising tractor harrowing to obtain a good seedbed, without hiring daily labourers. They are free to chose the best time for land preparation and so increase their chances to get good yields. To their income has also to be added the ploughing services provision to other farmers.
Figure 2.11 – Ranges of values added for some crops, all systems taken together.
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2.5.3.2 Big landowners with cattle kept by a Fulani – the medium type (SP2)
The SP2 type includes farmers with a slightly smaller acreage than textitSP1 landowners. But the main difference is their small cattle, as they own less than ten cows. As they cannot rely on an important capital, they manage their crops in a more intensive way, investing in fertilisers and chemicals. Cowpeas are sprayed three times with insecticides 10. Weather permitting cowpeas are sown in April-May and are harvested in July-August, when children during a busy on holiday can help on the farm. If cowpeas have to be sown in July, the harvest competes with soya an maize harvest. Moreover, the pressure of aphid sis at its highest in August-September.
Figure 2.12 – Composition of the value added of the SP2 production system
On equivalent surface ranges, SP2 farmers have a high per-crop value added than those of the SP1 type, with 500 to 750 cedis per worker. Adding animals, gathering and tree products, every worker annually produces 880 to 1,100 cedis for 4 to 6 acres. 7% of the value added is transferred to the Fulani herder. It is quite common that several livestock owners gather to hire a Fulani, if they have small herds. 10% of the value added pay for the daily labourers who provide 20% of the total of man-days. After distribution of the value added among the different economic actors, each family worker can get an income of 800 to 1,200 cedis per year. They can also sell building plots but they have less land reserves than the SP1 landowners.
10. In most of the interviews, it has not been possible to identify the chemicals used, as farmers rarely keep they containers. They call DDT all the products that have a milky colour when mixed with water, although DDT is officially banned in Ghana 54
2.5.3.3 Upland and lowland cultivation, high fertilisation (SP4)
Following family land division, the SP4 landowners do not have spare lands. In the past, they had to decapitalise their livestock to buy food when the harvests were bad. They now only own a few goats and fowls. Crops are managed more intensively than in the two previous types. Fertilisers are buried at every plant foot after a weeding, so the farmers can get better yield. For instance, maize net yield is 675 kg per acre, as against about 525 kg in the previous cases. Lowland rice and maize yields are respectively 725 and 400 kg per acre. Thus, 14 man-days are necessary in the SP4 system, as against 11 in the SP1 and SP2 systems. As we can see on figure 2.27, such a labour intensification is interesting only when surface is limiting. Indeed, still about upland maize, in the SP1 system , every man-day produces 50 kg of maize for a value added of 80 cedis per farmed acre. In the SP4 system, every man-day produces 45 kg for a value added of 120 cedis per farmed acre.
Figure 2.13 – Composition of the value added of the SP4 production system
More than 80% of the gross value added is produced by the crops. Uplands and lowlands present close values added per surface unit, around 120 and 140 Ghana cedis. The range of income per family worker extends from 700 to 1,200 cedis per year.
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2.5.4 Fulani herders farming maize with organic fertilisation (SP11)
Fulani herders are called to the community and look after one or several owners’ livestock. A Fulani family owns three to ten sheep and goats, as well as poultry. It can take care of 15 to 110 heads of cattle, and sheep and goats, according to the fodder availability. Ruminants graze on fallow lands, whoever owns them, for ten to twelve hours a day. The herder sometimes cut branches to complete the ration. Animals are parked in a corral that rotates only on the Fulani’s plots (the cattle and land owner sometimes come to gather faeces for its own fields). The herders farm half an acre to two acres of maize, yielding around 600 kg per acre. As can be seen on chart 2.11, the maize fertilised with animal faeces has a high value added per surface unit : 210 cedis against 80 cedis in the SP1 system.
Figure 2.14 – Composition of the value added of the SP11 production system
We have chosen to consider the herder as an employee receiving a salary from the livestock owner. The landowner makes some land available for the herder to produce part of his food and to park the animals. He also pays for tractor or bullock ploughing services, and supplies the Fulani family with food, i. e. 2 to 6 bags of maize (200 to 600 kg) per year. The owner also bears the cost of other fees, such as buying food ingredients or health fees. In addition, the herder benefits from all the faeces to fertilise his plots and from the milk he sells in the market. In return, the owner only gets meat production and the caretaking service. All the livestock fees are paid for by the owner A cow can give birth to one calf every eighteen months, and five calves on six reach weaning. An adult cow can be sold between 700 and 1,400 cedis. The immobilised capital is quite important and the livestock owner protects himself from robbers. This can explain why the terms of trade seem in favour of the Fulani. 60% of his income is from his salary, so that he is dependent on his job. Nowadays, many Fulanis are armed to protect their livestock. Thanks to the landowners’ maize, the herder can store his own harvest to sell it at higher prices. Fulani’s own livestock provides 50% of the value added. The family is not allowed to plant trees on the land. Shea nuts gathering counts for 10% of the value added created.
This system seems to be unfavourable to the landowners. They justify the employment of somebody from a different ethnic group : supporting a brother or a cousin to take care of the livestock would amount to give him an inferior social rank. As agriculture and livestock raising are not linked, taking care of animals is not yet considered as real farm work. Transfers of fertility could be organised from fallow lands to cattle owners’ fields, rotating the corral on both the owner and the herder’s plots. 58
2.5.5 Upland crops with no fertilisation (SP7a, SP7b with oxen)
This category includes both landowners and tenants who cannot access to lowlands, due to family land division or because they have recently come to the area. The SP7btype differs from the SP7a type by owning a pair of oxen for animal traction.
2.5.5.1 Upland crops with no fertilisation with no traction oxen (SP7a)
These farmers have a low level of equipment, since they only have hoes and cutlasses for farm-work, and bicycles to go to the fields and to transport the harvest. The family workforce is not limiting compared to the land, and the farmers hire labourers only for 10% of the man-days. For treasury reasons, maize is the only tractor-ploughed crop. Soil preparation for other crops is done by hand.
Figure 2.15 – Composition of the value added of the SP7a production system
The yam+sorghum//groundnut+sorghum2 years//maize2 years//cowpea+sorghum2 years/ /fal- low 3 years rotation receives no fertilisation. The acreage is limiting and the farmers can not afford long fallow period and short rotations. Crops contribute up to 75% of the value added and crop treasury remains under 1,000 cedis for the until July. School fees, food purchase and unexpected expenditures can levy important amounts in the treasury. Investing in fertilisers would reduce the household capacity to face daily life issues. The cropping system produces more than 550 kg of food per acre, that is four times the family needs. The work schedule is well filled by the family workers. Investing in fertilisers does not seem essential for these farmers. The alternation between tubers, cereals and legumes ensures a good fertility management.
The farmers’ annual income is higher than the survival threshold, with 600 to 950 Ghanaian cedis per family worker.
60 2.5.5.2 Upland crops with no fertilisation with a pair of traction oxen (SP7b)
The farmers have been able to buy a pair of oxen and use them to plough both their fields and other farms. That is why the number of available family members decreases during the farming season. Weaned oxen are bought about 200 cedis. Farmers raise them and train them to draft traction until they are four year-old. A plough cost between 120 and 170 cedis2010 and a blade about 30 cedis. A cart is bought around 200 cedis2010. The yoke is made by the farmer. The initial investment is quite important but it turns out to be very profitable On the one hand, the oxen’s are more valuable and can be sold about 800 cedis at the age of nine. On the other hand, the farmers save money on ploughing, as they do not have to hire tractor services or labourers any longer. Tractor services cost 30 cedis for one upland acre and 35 cedis for one lowland acre 11. Manual ploughing is more expensive, between 40 to 60 cedis per acre is all the workers are hired for. When the farmers own a pair of oxen, they save theses expenses and they can choose the best time to plough their field. Moreover, they provide ploughing services to other farmers, that are paid 20 cedis on uplands and 25 cedis on lowlands. Ox ploughing is cheaper than tractor ploughing but oxen are not many, and the farmers often have to call for tractors.
Figure 2.16 – Composition of the value added of the SP7b production system
Oxen are tethered in the courtyard or in a nearby field. An ox staying in the corral or with other cattle would have to be trained again. A family member has to spend time to look after the oxen and to make them work all year long. This is one of the reasons explaining why oxen are not much present in the study area. Ox owners often invest in a second pair to relieve the first pair in the middle of a ploughing day, so that the productivity increases. The second pair is usually two to four years younger than the first one, and it takes over from the first pair at its culling.
When the oxen are used to plough an acre on another farm, two workers are busy for a day, one holding the plough, the other guiding the animals. The family has to hire labourers for some farm work when the ox-herd is away. So the value added is divided according to the greater number of workers, hence the lower value added of the SP7b type compared to the SP7a type. But owning oxen boosts the income by 15 to 20%, that is an income of 800 to 1,150 cedis per family worker.
11. Prices can vary by 15% according to the tractor availability in the communities. 61
2.5.6 Lowland, upland and dry season garden cultivation (SP3a, SP3b, SP3c)
The three following categories can access to uplands, lowlands and dry season gardens, from which they get 5 to 30% of the farm’s value added.
2.5.6.1 Lowland, upland and dry season garden cultivation – large surfaces (SP3a)
The SP3atype brings together large farms, from 17 to 35 acres, either owned or rented by the farmers. On uplands, short rotations are practised, thanks to the relatively abundant workforce. The farms are partly located in the zone 1b, characterised by lateritic soils, not very deep and with a low fertility. Cassava is more suitable for these soils than yams. The cassava//groundnut+sorghum3 years/ /fallow 3 years rotation makes good use of the low resources. On more fertile soils, a yam+sorghum/ /maize2 years//fallow 3 years rotation, with fertilised maize, produces two tons of tubers, 150 kg of sorghum and 400 kg of maize on six acres. A last upland rotation presents better maize yields with soya than previous crop : soya2 years//maize2 years//cowpea+sorghum2 years//fallow 3 years. Soya is fertilised with eight nitrogen units and its place at the head of rotation is quite interesting. If the rhizobium is present, soya can supplant the fallow period to reproduce soil fertility. Groundnuts and soya are cultivated with the help of many hired labourers.
Lowland rice is not fertilised and it is not mix-cropped with maize, because the farmers want to avoid the competition for nutrients. Rice yields are low, in the order of 300 kg per acre. As they can only access to a small lowland acreage, the farmers do not want to invest too much in rice production. It accounts for 3 % of the total value added.
Figure 2.17 – Composition of the value added of the SP3a production system
Dry season gardens contribute to 10% of the value added. The gardens are labour intensive, but they are farmed during a slack period. In most cases, tomatoes are sown in a nurseries near the farmhouse to be watered every day. The farmer then prepares cultivation beds : the garden is divided in flat portions separated by small ridges. The beds will retain water until its seepage. Three to four weeks after the sowing, tomato plants are transplanted in the beds. The garden is weeded every three weeks. 5 to 30 nitrogen units are spread per acre, depending on the soil and farming time. Indeed, depending on their work schedule, the treasury needs and the soil moisture, 64 the producers choose to farm the gardens in the beginning, in the middle or in the end of the dry season. The number of insecticide and fungicide sprayings varies according to the parasitic pressure, but the cost of chemicals seldom exceeds 10 cedis per acre. In a good year, sixty basins can be harvested. Pepper and green pepper are often mix-cropped with tomatoes. They are nursed three weekends after tomatoes and transplanted with the same delay. Okro can be sown directly between the pepper and tomato plants. Gardens are usually small, in the order of a tenth of an acre, but the value added can exceed 1,000 cedis per acre (see figure 2.11). The harvest takes place during the dry season and enables input purchases for the farming season to come.
On the whole farm, 25% of the man-days are done by hired labourers. 15% of the value added is used to pay them. One of the family members works in town during the dry season and complete the family income. Each family worker get 750 to 1,150 cedis per year.
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2.5.6.2 Lowland, upland and dry season garden cultivation – medium surfaces (SP3b)
Within the SP3b type, the acreage is smaller, between 10 and 30 acres. Workforce is more limiting, with only two full-time workers. Lowland acreage is bigger than in the previous type, but only a part of it is farmed for financial reasons. Crop treasury remains very low until August harvests. Even if the dry season garden finances some inputs at the beginning of the farming season, there is little leeway.
Figure 2.18 – Composition of the value added of the SP3b production system
Fertility management in the lowlands is complex In addition to alluvia and colluvia deposits, the farmers use fallow periods to ensure vertical fertility transfers. Rice and maize yields evolve after a fallow period : the first year, the farmers can harvest three bags of cereals per acre and 5 the second year, before seeing a gradual yield decrease. The first year, the fertility effect of the shrubby and herbaceous fallow is hidden by the weed pressure. The next years, weeds are less strong thanks to weedings and ploughings, and the yield evolution follows the fertility decrease. When the value added becomes too low, the farmers prefer to leave the field to fallow for three to ten years. Fallow participates in reducing water streams and favours the sedimentation of minerals. Among them, the effect of sulphate of ammonia may be important, since it pervades water and no boundaries separate the plots.
The small goat herd is free during the day and sometimes during the night. Several reasons can be found to explain what could appear as negligence. Schooled children can not look after the herd any longer. Adults prefer to devote themselves to the crops, their value added being higher and more certain than that of small herds . If the animals were tethered, the farmers would have a lot of work to move them regularly. Moreover, parked or tethered animals can be easily rustled In most cases, animals are stolen in the courtyard or in a nearby corral on rainy evenings. Free animals are harder to rustle. To have them back at night, the farmers give them few cereals or agriculture byproducts, but it is not a real ration. Poultry is here more profitable than goats, and all the animals bring in 850 cedis a year, that is a quarter of the farm’s value added.
Family worker income extends from 850 to 1250 cedis a year.
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2.5.6.3 Upland and dry season garden cultivation, uncultivated lowlands (SP3c)
The farmers of the SP3c production system do not farm the lowlands, which are left to fallow. They concentrate their work on uplands crops and on the small dry season gardens. Upland rotations are varied and alternate legumes and cereals or tubers. During the dry season, the family diet is based on yam and cassava. The farmers therefore store a part of their maize, groundnuts and cowpeas harvest to sell them at higher prices. This explains why treasury remains highly positive all year long.
Figure 2.19 – Composition of the value added of the SP3c production system
Few animals are raised in this category. Their livestock having been rustled at least once, the farmers are reluctant to invest in new animals. They choose to take little risks and buy cheap animals such as goats and fowls. On the contrary, they invest in the small dry season gardens that produce the quarter or their value added. Each worker produces 600 to 750 cedis a year on two to five acres. Each family worker gets a yearly 870-to-1,250 cedis income.
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2.5.7 Farms managed by women (SP9)
When her husband is not a farmer or when she is a widow, a woman can farm a land on her own. Women usually grow groundnuts or bambara beans, because they grow on light soil that women can plough. The land belongs to their family or is rented from a landowner or an institution. All the work is done by hand and buying seeds for the first year of cultivation is the only investment. Harvests are totally transformed to have the highest value added by retail selling . The sales of gathering products account for half of the value added. This proportion is all the higher as farms are distant from Wa, because agroforestry parkland is denser and fallow lands are more frequent. Women also work on other farms to sow, weed and harvest. This production system remains very precarious and women often depend on the income of other family members. Children are not really involved in the production process. When adults, they take part in the production and become farm managers in place of their mothers. The cropping system is then altered with the introduction of tubers and cereals.
Figure 2.20 – Composition of the value added of the SP9 production system
Combining the farm products and the wages they can get on other farms, these women can get 400 to 650 cedis per year.
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2.5.8 The small precarious farms (SP8 a, b, c and d)
This category brings together farms with a precarious access to land. The farmers may have been evicted from their former farm or may be newcomers in the area. They can only access to a small acreage, with no guarantee not to be evicted for the next farming season. The farmers cultivating on the UDS campus can be evicted at anytime. Given their small acreage an their limited investment capacity, their farm income is not sufficient to live. They have to work on other farms to be able to buy food and inputs, and this work can compete with their own farm work schedule. Within these types, the farmers who were not employed to raise livestock start to invest in small animals to get an extra income. They are not allowed to plant trees, so they rely on gathering to collect fruit and leaves. Depending on the land they have access to and their workforce , the farmers develop different production systems. If they have to farm a new land, they adapt their production system to the new context.
In some types the farmers do not have enough funds and enough work force to farm all the acreage they could. They can neither buy inputs to increase their yields. Work on other farms represent up to 75% of the family income, that extend from 600 to 800 cedis per family worker.
Figure 2.21 – Composition of the value added of the SP8a production system
Figure 2.22 – Composition of the value added of the SP8b production system
73 Figure 2.23 – Composition of the value added of the SP8c production system
Figure 2.24 – Composition of the value added of the SP8d production system
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2.5.9 The farms with a high investment level (SP5 and SP6)
Within this category two types of landowners are gathered, who invest massively in their production. Their income exceeds 750 cedis per family worker and per year.
2.5.9.1 The farms specialised in cash crops (SP5)
Type SP5 farmers invest in selected seeds, fertilisers and hired labourers to grow a small variety of crops in sole cropping. On uplands, a maize//legumes rotation is practised. The durations of the different crop cycle vary with the farms. Thanks to fertilisers and herbicides, farmers are less dependent on crop succession to control weeds and reproduce soil fertility. On lowlands, a two-to- five-year fallow follows five to ten years of rice cultivation. Cereals are fertilised up to 30 nitrogen units per acre.
50% of the man-days are done by hired labourers. The day of sowing or the day after, Glypho- sate and Atrazine are sprayed using a manual sprayer 12 on the whole field to limit weed pressure. Two weedings are done, but fewer man-days are necessary. Using fertilisers and herbicides, a well as the availability of many labourers at the best time to weed ensure a production of more than 800 kg of maize per acre. Soya is also weeded twice and is fertilised with 20 nitrogen units per acre. As the suitable rhizobia are not always present in the soils, farmers prefer to secure their yields by fertilising the legume. Rice management is similar to maize management.
Figure 2.25 – Composition of the value added of the SP5 production system
Legumes are sold first to cover important labour costs. Then, maize is sold, as the farmers can experience important losses during the storage 13. Owing to the high input and labour costs, maize and legume value added per acre is lower than 80 cedis. Rice has an high value added per acre, because the farmers can store the harvest and sell it during the following lean period.
12. From an sanitary point of view, this spraying is really dangerous for the operator. His bare head, legs and arms are covered with toxic chemicals. 13. A specific case has not been modelled in the study. Some farmers produce seeds for the Ministry of Agriculture or for private traders. Input seeds are more expensive but the value added per surface unit is twice or thrice higher than in grain production.
79 This type of farms looks like the model that MOFA promotes, as part of Block Farms or RSSP programs. Actions are often targeted towards one crop, without considering either the rotation, either the carry-over effect of preceding crops. As shown on charts 2.27 and 2.28, the value added per acre of this production system is the lowest in the study area. This system only makes sense in large-scale farms and it does not seem to fit with the context around Wa . As shown on the work schedules, the specialisation in a few crops leads to work peaks, that force to hire labour, while the family workforce is underemployed for a great part of the year.
Although the family workers have high incomes (850 to 1,150 cedis per year), this systems demands a high level of initial capital. The crop treasury chart shows that receipts and expenses only balance each other from October. Labour, inputs and tractor services levy important amounts in the treasury. 30% of the value added is used to remunerate the hired labourers.
80
2.5.9.2 Intensive lowland farming (SP6)
The lowlands these farmers have access to never remain flooded more than a few consecutive days during the rainy season. There the farmers rotate rainy season maize and dry season tomatoes for two years. Tomatoes are sown in nurseries. Many workers are hired to erect ridges in the lowlands to transplant the tomato plants. Labourers are also hired for the two weedings. 8 NPK units and 12 nitrogen units are buried at each plant foot. The farmers spray insecticides three times, every two to three weeks. When tomatoes are harvested, the farmers benefit from the highest prices in the middle of the dry season. One half of the tomato acreage is farmed a month after the other half, in order to spread the farm work and the expenses. Tomato cultivation is labour intensive, with 90 man-days per acre, half of them being hired. The maize/tomatoes succession produces 470 cedis per acre.
After two years of maize and tomatoes, the farmers mix-crop rice and maize before leaving the field to fallow for one year. 875 kg of rice and 725 kg of maize are produced on one acre. Not all the lowland acreage is farmed. One to three acres are left untouched, because they are either too flooded, or too far from the farmhouse. As we can see on the work schedule and the treasury chart, this cropping system presents a very good distribution of both workload and budget.
Figure 2.26 – Composition of the value added of the SP6 production system
Unlike lowlands, uplands are cultivated in a more extensive way with a yam+sorghum//maize2 years//soya2 rotation that only brings in 80 cedis per acre. Only maize is fertilised. Mango tree plantations and gardens do not account much in the value added composition. The income per family worker ranges from 750 to 1,300 cedis per year.
82
2.6 The current production systems are bound to evolve qui- ckly over the next years
Figure 2.3 summarise the main characteristics of the identified production systems and their evolution. The peri-urban area is being revolutionised , owing to urban development and the deep change in cropping systems : from a manual slash-and-burn system to a mechanised system in which fertility is reproduced by mineral or organic fertilisers, through an agroforestry parkland system. Type SP5 and SP6 farmers have been able to invest early to modify the way they exploit the environment. Others suffer from the global evolution and have no leverage on it, like SP8 type farmers.
Livestock raising undergoes fast changes. In the slash-and-burn and parkland systems, livestock and crops are separated, since fertility reproduction is provided by trees. The farmers are no trying to integrate animals in the fertility reproduction process. How to look after, to feed and to cure animals remains problematic for most farmers.
One of the major issues in the study area is the lack of investment by the farmers. No water management infrastructures are present, although all farmers complain about the erratic rainfall pattern. Given the current land tenure system, those who need to increase their yields by intensifying their production per surface unit do not want to risk investing on a land they could be evicted from. On the contrary, those who could invest have no interest in intensifying their production per surface unit, as acreage is not a limit. This partly explains why most of the infrastructures built by development projects got ruined after a few years. The land tenure system appears to be an obstacle to investment and intensification in the study area.
Chart 2.27 represents the value added ranges per worker only considering the cropping systems. The SP5 type sets itself apart : sole cropping makes good use of large acreages when labour is not a limit, but its value added per surface unit is lower than the other systems’. The SP1 to SP4 large farms produce values added among the highest, with 130 to 330 cedis per worker on 2.5 to 7.5 acres. Fertilisers effect is obvious, in comparison to the other types. The SP11 production system makes good use of small acreages by using an abundant organic fertilisation. The SP6 system has a high value added per surface unit, thanks to an important differentiation in cropping systems depending on parts of the ecosystem . This labour intensive system is really interesting for the community owing to its high value added per acre and per worker.
Let us now focus on the total value added (chart 2.28), which takes into account gathering and livestock raising. SP1 farms, with their large cattle, differ from the other farms. Generally, owing animals only accentuate the differences observed in the previous chart. The wealthiest invest in crops thanks to their livestock and can invest in animals with the crop benefits. The poorest can invest neither in livestock nor inputs
Income gaps (chart 2.29) are less marked than the value added ones. The biggest farms get high incomes by taking over a part of the value added produced by the hired labourers. Thanks to the wages they get for farm work and jobs in town, the smallest farmers can get an income close to the survival threshold, with the result that they can maintain their farms. The comparison of the SP7a and SP7b systems shows a 25% income increase thanks to oxen ownership. The analysis will be pursued in the following part, from the project point of view.
84 Figure 2.27 – Comparison of the value added ranges for the cropping systems only
85 Figure 2.28 – Comparison of the net value added ranges for the different production systems
86 Figure 2.29 – Comparison of the income ranges for the different production systems
87 3 As implemented, the RSSP does not seem to be able to respond to the development issues of the study area
The study area undergoes an agricultural revolution. The fast population growth has made the traditional slash-and-burn system with lineage segmentation obsolete. A new mode of fertility reproduction, based on vertical fertility transfers and nitrogen fixation by an agroforestry parkland and legume cultivation had just started to develop when the practices of the green revolution were introduced by institutions and NGOs. Fertility reproduction is then ensured by mineral fertilisers. The identified production systems are at different stages of these major changes. Around Wa, urban development forces farms to evolve faster.
Owing a land is really difficult and this limits investment on many farms (figure 3.1). Young people do not want to go into farming with their parents’ techniques, but want to practise input- based cash crop farming. Yet, annual leases favour mining land exploitation rather than sustainable fertility management and productive investments. In the current system, landowners have no interest in renting their land out, since the rent is only symbolic. A real long-time farm tenancy or a share- cropping system could make the farm structures more durable and favour a sustainable resource management.
Figure 3.1 – Evolution of land tenure conditions in the study area
88 3.1 Some points have to be checked before putting the re- sults of this study into the regional context
We have to stand back to assess the reliability of the results and to understand how they can be used in other contexts in the Upper West Region.
3.1.1 About community and farmers sampling
Interviews were carried out on rationally sampled economic actors. Landscape screening and historical interviews have enabled us to understand the main characteristics of the area and to identify different farm categories. We tried to meet farmers from each category of this first typology. In the course of the interviews, the typology became more accurate and we defined new farmers to interview. This study presents the more important and the more representative production systems, in terms of employment and farmed acreage. We made sure to carry out a least five interviews per community to take into account the social diversity that can exist among the villages. Within the communities, we visited different farms, trying not to interview only the chief’s friends or the translator’s contacts. Given the interviews conditions, it seems to us that this diagnosis faithfully describes the situation of agriculture in the study area.
3.1.2 About the reliability of the gathered information
During the first interviews, we noticed that a farmer could give different answers according to whether the Agriculture Extension Agent was present or not. These agents hand out technical packages 1 to which farmers have to accept to benefit from the Ministry’s programs. No ministry agent was present during the technical and economic interviews. Moreover, the farmers’ answers were systematically checked against the previous answers to other aspects of the farm. When two elements of information seemed contradictory, we went back to the question to get to an in-depth understanding of the situation. Thus, the way we asked the questions and the number of interviews make us believe that the gathered information is relevant.
3.1.3 An in-depth study of agricultural value chains is missing in this diagnosis
The work in collaboration with a Ghanaian student did not enable us to study the value chains and the marketing ways as much as we wanted to. We interviewed market women, millers, animal traders, etc. But some links of the chain are missing to understand how the value added is shared among the economic actors and what the involved strategies are. Some points appear clearly.
Market women take a great part of the value added. They buy crop production from farmers and traders. Their profit margin is based on the difference between the number of bowls bought and the number of bowls sold. When they buy grains, they use slightly concave bowls and
1. Operational sequence for a given crop that the government promotes on a large-scale. It is not necessarily adapted to the local agricultural context. 89 subtly place their arm around the bowl to increase its capacity. They use flat-bottomed bowls that they tip up when they sell to reduce the capacity. For forty bowls she buys (capacity of a cocoa bag, see appendix A.2), a market woman can sell 42 to 46 bowls at the same price, that is a 5 to 15% margin. Market women are in a position of strength on Wa’s market and in the surrounding communities, and they agree on the producer prices. Most of them live in town and benefit from their family’s financial support, so that they can speculate in farm products. Farmers usually contact them when they have an urgent treasury need and have to sell their production at low prices. During the last decade, the government has developed the electricity network around Wa. In the communities involved, investors from Wa have installed electric mills. Women come there to have their grain, dry tubers and roasted sheanuts ground for forty pesewas per bowl. For investors, the return on investment takes less than one year, thanks to a 50% net margin. Rice mills are all located in Wa. A forty bowl bag is milled for three cedis, as against four cedis for a fifty bowl bag. In the Upper West Region, there is no direct-milling machine and 90% of the milled rice is parboiled beforehand. Two bowls of paddy rice (4 kg) give one bowl of milled rice (3 kg). With the same mills, direct milling would produce lower yields : 0,8 bowls (2.4 kg) for two bowls of paddy rice. The milling byproducts, such as bran, are sold to pig breeders for one to two cedis a bag. For their own consumption, poor farmers and the people living in remote communities thresh rice with a pestle, producing two bowls of husked rice per hour. A lot of imported rice can be found, especially perfumed rice, on the markets and in the shops. In spite of the government’s efforts, perfumed rice varieties, such as Jasmin Rice, are not much grown in the study area. Most farmers prefer to rely on the varieties they are used to growing and that can yield with little fertilisation. Consumers are very interested in imported rice, because of its taste. The presence of stones in local rice encourages them to buy imported rice all the more so as it is sometimes cheaper.
3.1.4 Can the study be generalised to the whole region ?
Given the precision level demanded for this study, it has been carried out in a 15 by 20 km area south-east of Wa, that is less than 2% of the Upper West Region surface area. The area is predominated by the Wale people and Wa’s urban development is not representative of the region’s dynamics. As a consequence, this study can not be generalised as it is to other areas in the Upper West Region. However, many characteristics can be found in other areas. The ecological, historical and social context will have to be seriously studied to determine to what extent the here presented results could be used in other situations. This study can be used as a basis to adapt the RSSP to other contexts. According to the gathered information, the results are likely to be valid in the three Wa districts : Wa West, Wa Municipal and Wa East. Social organisations are historically similar and the distance to Wa could be the main variable to adjust
In the context of the study area, we can wonder about the pertinence of a governmental project such as the rice sector support project.
90 3.2 Presently, the objectives of the project seem hard to fulfil
The rice sector support project is an ambitious project aiming at improving the poor farmers’ living standards and strengthening the rice sector at the national scale. The following paragraphs are based on what has been observed during the study, they can not apply to the possible adaptations brought about by decision makers.
3.2.1 The project penalises the poorest farmers
3.2.1.1 Willing to start lowland development quickly has forced the project team to skip basic steps
The RSSP aims at encouraging rice production among farmers, notable the poorest ones. If they can have access to the suitable inputs, the small farm peasants are most in a position to increase their production per surface unit. big farmers rather intend to make the best use of their workforce and their capital, by increasing the farmed acreage. The project’s objectives are consistent with the government’s will to develop rice production and alleviate poverty. To fulfil them, the project plans to construct bunds and drains in certain lowlands in order to improve water management and secure rice yields. It also plans to facilitate the access to credit to enable the farmers to invest in inputs, without suffering from usurious rates (in cash or in work). New varieties from research institutes will be grown, using fertilisers. The concerned lowlands have been selected according to the following criteria :
– Access to the lowland from the villages has to be easy, so that the farmers can work regularly and look after their crops. – Soils have to be suitable for rice cultivation. – The lowland has to be easy to clear and develop. For the last two points, the University for Development Studies carried out studies to facilitate the choice of lowland. Unfortunately, the studies arrived late and brought little information. – Land tenure conditions have to be clear. The lowland must not be owned by few landowners and the landowners must be ready to rent out some of their plots to poor farmers.
Since its beginning, the project has been behind schedule, notably for organisational reasons. This year was considered as the last chance year, as the Agence Francaise de Développement, which fund the project, had talked about halting the project if no RSSP rice had grown at the end to the year. In haste, the project was decided to start to develop the lowlands in June, at the beginning of the rainy season. Ploughed plots were destroyed by the construction vehicles. Contractors were hired and trained quickly. Some construction works could not be achieved, as the soils became impassable because of the rains. In Kolihogu lowland, near Sing, the bounds have not been well compacted and August-September rains could damage them. The value of the developed lowlands was sharply increased before identifying the concerned landowners and farmers. The NGOs in charge of helping in land distribution and land tenure system adaptation started to work with the communities only after the construction began. Moreover, no budget has been released to finance the inputs for this first farming season, and the Ministry had to use the Block Farms funds. Contrary to what is planned within the RSSP framework, the inputs have been advanced in kind to be refunded after the harvest. The RSSP plan to develop credit structures to make the farmers autonomous in their input management. The haste has created confusion and farmers are now expecting to always receive input advances. Thus, the effects that can be observed today are not those aimed by the project.
91 Figure 3.2 – Rice weeding in a lowland developed within the RSSP framework (N. Brulard, July 2011)
3.2.1.2 A possible effect of the RSSP on the economy of the study area
We modelled the possible effects of the project on the different production systems in the study area. It remains a cursory modelling, additional data would have been necessary to carry out a detailed analysis. To build up the analysis, we went by several hypotheses that come from the interviews and the observation of the project’s implementation.
– The small farms within the SP8a/b/c, SP10 types are evicted from the developed lowland by the landowners. The latter fear that the Ministry of Agriculture recognises the right to farm their land to the tenants. – The big landowners ((SP1, SP2 types) and type SP3b farmers adopt the lowland cropping system of the SP5 type. The bunds retain water earlier in the year, and maize mix-cropping is given up, as water would destroy the crop before the harvest. Thanks to the seeds and fertilisers provided by the project (or bought thanks to the credit structures that have been set up), these farmers get yields in the order of 600 kg per acre. They still try to make the best use of a limiting workforce and do not intensify the production per acre as much as they could. A nursed rice system could increase the yields and may make two rice seasons possible in certain situations 2. This labour intensive system has not been considered here. – Middle size farms increase rice yields by adopting the SP5lowland cropping system. Half of their lowland acreage is farm with rice and the crop is managed more intensively by making a better use of the fertilisers. They get 800 kg of rice per acre but have to give up maize cultivation. SP3a and SP4 types are concerned. – SP6 farmers can not practise their intensive lowland rotation anymore, since the hydraulic constructions retain water and prevent rainy season maize cultivation. They also adopt the SP5lowland cropping system, producing 800 kg of rice per acre. – SP3c, SP5, SP7a/b, SP8b, SP9 and SP11 types are not altered.
2. When the Busa dam irrigation system what functioning at top speed, some producers could grow rice twice in a year. Unfortunately, we have not been able to access the technical and economic results of this system.
92 – No changes in the work on other farms are considered. Such a modification would demand a detailed analysis of labour availability in the study area.
All the lowlands are not planned to be developed and all the farmers within a same production system will not be affected by the project in the same way. We have considered that one third of each type farms will be concerned by the project, the two other thirds keep on managing their current production system. Even if the production systems are modified with the project, we keep the same typology to facilitate the comparison between the situations with and without the project implementation. Figure 3.3 shows that the value added of the production systems does not evolve very much for most of the farms. In the farms giving up maize mix-cropping to practise rice sole cropping, the increase in rice yields compensates / makes for the loss of maize production. SP1 and SP2 farms have to hire more labourers to sow and harvest rice The minimum number of workers needed for the farm to function increases and the ranges of value added per acre are sharply reduced. On the contrary, in the SP6 system, the cropping system simplification leads to a drop in the number of hired labourers in comparison to the (maize/tomato)2 years//rice+maize//fallow rotation. Among the precarious farms, SP8a farms can experience a 20% decrease in their value added.
Figure 3.3 – Evolution of the production system values added with the project (only the affected systems are represented). In bright colours, the situation with the project, in pastel, the situation without the project.
93 Considering the proportions of the different production systems (see table 2.7 on page 43), we can estimate the evolution of the cumulative value added at the scale of the study area. Only taking into account the value added of the farm, without considering the input and output sectors, the RSSP could increase wealth creation by 6% in the study area. However, it would lead to a massive rise in fertiliser use. As fertilisers are subsidised by more than 50% by the government, the cost overruns may reduce the increase in value added. In addition, the investments to fund the project have not been considered. A great part of the 13 million euro budget are a loan that Ghana, already in debt, will have to refund to France. In the present state of affairs, the surplus in wealth creation may not compensate the initial investment. As a consequence, this 6% increase has to be considered with caution, without any in-depth study of the project impact.
One of the project’s objectives is to increase the income of the poorest farmers and to improve their food security. The eviction from lowlands of some farmers among the most precarious, owing to the hasted implementation of the project, does not seem to be a step in this direction. According to the results, the project may increase the monopolising of the value added by the wealthiest farmers, leading to a more precarious situation for the poor farmers. The developed cropping systems demand a numerous hired workforce during near work peaks. The evicted farmers would probably find daily labourers jobs on their former land. Given the competition to find a job around Wa, the landowners are likely to be in a position of strength to negotiate the wages. The objective of increase the poor farmers’ income therefore seems hard to fulfil in a sustainable way.
It seems important to base such a project on community-based organisations, to involve far- mers, traders and processors. This is one on the objectives of the project, the consultation and involvement process was hardly started during the study. It could jeopardise the long-term objec- tives of the RSSP. Lowland development was decided hastily by the Ministry, without involving the farmers and we can wonder how the developed infrastructures will be maintained. The effects of the previous projects can not be clearly seen in the fields, perhaps for the same reasons. It would be important to identify a local authority in charge of the organisation of infrastructure maintenance The legitimacy of the chief of the land can be questioned : as a big landowner, will he be able to distribute the plots and solve the conflicts in an as impartial way as the project expects ?
3.2.2 Rice inter-profession is nonexistent
The Ghanaian Rice inter-professional body has been created as part of RSSP. It brings together importers, millers, traders and producers with the intention of strengthening the rice sector in Ghana. Actually, the GRIB is nonexistent at the farmer and small miller scales in the study area. Farmer- based organisations are ineffective in the communities. s farmers sell their production on their own and do not have much negotiation power facing traders.
A better structuring of the sector would develop the dialogue between actors and favour a better management of supply and demand. In addition, farmer-based organisation could speed up the diffusion of new techniques and new varieties. For instance, an isolated farmer would hesitate to grow a short-duration variety if his neighbours grow low-duration varieties, because birds would destroy his plot when matured. If the farmers coordinated their crops, several plots would be matured at the same time and damage by birds would be spread out. Helping in creating farmer-based organisations seems to be essential to develop a real rice sector.
94 3.2.3 Credit structures are not developed enough
During the interview, it was not possible to identify a usury system, in which a farmer would lend on bag of grain and ask for two or three bags after the following harvest. Farmers seemed not to be aware of such a system. Yet, it is likely to exist in the study area. Exchanging work against products seems to be more common. When a farmer lacks seeds of food, he can sell his workforce to another farmer who can supply him with the goods he needs. The farmer in demand is clearly in a position of weakness since he often asks as a last resort. His employer can take advantage of the situation to make him carry out underpaid works that can compete with the production of the farmer in demand.
In several communities, like Bihie or Kolikpara, NGOs have shown women how to manage a community bank. Every week, the farmers are invited to save money in the mutual fund. By turns they can benefit from a loan for investment projects. Theoretically they cannot withdraw money from the savings to buy food. This system is interesting in several aspects. First, farmers say they are motivated to save cash every week, in order not to be considered as incompetent by the other farmers. Moreover, when a farmer wants to invest with the community fund, social pressure forces him to prepare his project properly to be able to refund the community. The conflicts between the Ministry and the farmers who cannot refund input advances are frequent. But farmers pay more attention when they run the risk of being ostracised from the community. Community micro-finance is an excellent incentive for responsible investment.
3.2.4 Like many other projects, the RSSP focuses on only one production
The will to develop rice production nationwide can limit this very development. Indeed, the RSSP, like many other projects, promotes technical packages to be applied to a sole crop. The Block Farms program ensures the promotion of Green Revolution practices among farmers, by providing free the farm inputs. The farmers who bring together a minimum surface can benefit from tractor services, rice, maize of groundnut seeds, as well as two bags of NPK and one bag of sulphate of ammonium per acre. Alone or as a group, big farms are more likely to reach the minimum required acreage to be involved in the program, while they have fewer cash problems. The promoted cropping systems usually produce a low value added per acre, as shown with the SP5 type on chart 2.28. NGOs, such as ADRA, implement similar program on maize and soya beans. Given the probable increase in fertiliser prices to come, the agriculture of the region should not tend towards this model.
As seen before, the shortening of the fallow period leads to a decrease in soil fertility and structural stability. A specific attention has to be paid on fertility management and the fight against erosion and leaching. Rotations and cropping systems are a good target. intensive lowland farming (though input intensive) of SP6 farms or the diversity of cropping systems of Dagati farms show that rotations adapted to the environment can bring in a high added value per acre and per worker. In addition, farmers are frequently canvassed to join various projects focusing on a specific crop. This does not favour a long-term resource management, especially in the current land tenure system.
95 3.3 Several development axes could be thoroughly studied in the study area
These proposals are based on the analysis carried out around Wa. They are done with regard to different objectives. On the one hand, they respond to the government’s will to alleviate poverty and malnutrition in the north of the country. On the other hand, they aim at increasing the global value added of the area, by enabling most people to invest in their production and secure their yields. Given the high unemployment rate in Wa, the proposals intend to maintain as many jobs in agriculture as possible. Thus, they set out to make the small farms durable. Lastly, they take into account the conservation of the ecosystem, both for sanitary and environmental reasons, but also to ensure the durability of production systems.
3.3.1 Adapting the land tenure system would favour investment and make farms durable
The land tenure system in one of the factors that limit the most a change in the production systems. landowners have little interest in renting their land out and fear to be dispossessed of it. It is more and more difficult for tenants to have control of the land they farm : the owners limit or ban tree plantation, they can evict the tenants if land value increases. The recent evictions from the UDS campus have made some categories of farmers more precarious. To survive, they cut trees to produce firewood and charcoal, even more jeopardising the capacity of the agroecosystem to renew its fertility.
The pressure of urbanisation around Wa is intense. Presently, there is neither competent authority nor political will to rationalise urban progress over farm lands. The rice sector support project could be a great opportunity to think about a new land tenure with the communities. As one of its objectives is to improve the income of a great number of poor farmers, the project will have to help the landowners and the tenants to find an agreement on a durable land management. The increase in land value could encourage landowners to ask for a part of the value added, in the form of a rent or a percentage of the harvest. It will be the recruited NGOs’ responsibility to make sure that the sharing is egalitarian enough to reach the project objectives.
3.3.2 Farmers need long-term visibility to plan their production
Short-term projects do not enable farmers to adapt their production system to the market. At the end of a project, farmers often happen to be deprived of the project support, such as input advances or harvest purchases, without being prepared. It could be interesting to work on both supply and demand. Dr. Banka’s initiative is quite interesting from this point of view. His firm, producing food products from soya, is based in the Upper West Region. To ensure its supply, he implements a program similar to the Block farms, providing tractor services, seeds and inputs to the farmers. The whole harvest is bought at market price, after subtracting the advances. With this durable outlet, the farmers are sure to sell their products and can plan their production on a medium term.
96 3.3.3 A real association between agriculture and livestock raising would partly solve the problem of soil fertility reproduction
In most of the farms livestock is considered as a capital to bear family expenses and some agricultural investments. The more precarious farmers cannot count on fruit trees any longer to get an extra income and they turn to livestock raising to ensure this role. Many farmers are in search of a way to combine livestock raising and agriculture, but obstacles are still many.
Among the interviewed farmers, only one grows maize, soya and groundnuts as fodder crops. Legumes are sold to factories that extract oil and sell cakes back to farmers. This farmer raises many layers, broilers, goats and pigs. He is a landowner and his land is enclosed. This enclosure allow many investments. Crops and fallow lands are protected from grazing animals, fruit and fodder trees are also protected from animals and thieves. His livestock is easily looked after and fed and the risk of robbery is reduced. Many farmers go in the same direction in the dry and wet season gardens : they erect fences to protect their production and can invest a lot of work in this intensive system, mixing trees and vegetables. An agrosylvopastoral system could develop on uplands, near the villages. Besides its functions as protection and separation, a hedge can ensure the production of fodder for the livestock. It can be planted with fruit trees and fodder trees to provide food for both family and livestock, while favouring vertical fertility transfers and limiting wind and water erosion. In addition to fodder trees, animal diet could be based on current crops byproducts. To be efficient, this system would require means of transportation, such as carts. Indeed, legume leaves are a very interesting forage and it can be carried dry to the house to be stored in prevision of the dry season. To reduce fertility problems and feed the livestock, fodder legumes could be grown in place of the fallow period. Keeping animals enclosed enables farmers to pick up their faeces as fertilisers. The corral can be fixed and faeces are gathered and spread, or it can rotate on the fields to fertilise. The example of the Fulani system shows how profitable organic fertilisation can be as compared to mineral fertilisation. Organic fertilisers mineralise slowly and improve soil structure, nutrients are less easily leached.
If it appears as an interesting solution to secure yields, enclosure poses many social problems. Enclosing a part of the farm demands an important investment, both in time and in cash, that only the big farmers could bear. On the other hand, the current land tenure system could penalise the tenants. If they are not allowed to enclose their plots, they will not be able to intensify and secure their production as much as the landowners. A great part of the fallow lands in large farms could also be enclosed, so the tenants would not be allowed to gather sheanuts and make their animals graze on these lands any longer. This process can be observed today : some people from Wa hedge their building plots with stinging plants animals cannot eat. They have planted fruit trees between the shea and dawadawa trees. The farmers are deprived of common pastures.
Land tenure security remains a key point to enable farmers to develop new systems. Farmers would then have to access the suitable transportation equipment, and animal traction could be a good solution. In an enclosed farm, it is easy to take care of a pair of oxen or a donkey. Animals can take part in fodder and faeces transportation, in field ploughing and in farm production transportation. Farmers would also have to access adapted legume and grass varieties to produce forage and renew soil fertility, in addition with the agroforestry parkland. Livestock raising would require a far more important investment than today, but it would be profitable thanks to secure crop, animal and fruit yields.
This system seems to suit the context of the study area and could globally increase the value added. Farmers among all the categories are looking for solutions to implement such a system. Institutions and NGOs could take part in this implementation by helping to raise some of the 97 identified difficulties. A Ministry program is a step in this direction : ten sheep are lent to farmers for two years. After the two years, the farmers have to give back ten sheep and they keep the offspring. Agriculture and veterinary extension could be more accurate if the farm was considered as a whole.
98 Conclusion
The study area is experiencing an agricultural revolution. The increase in population density, the quick development of Wa and new techniques and varieties have caused the production systems to evolve. At the beginning if the XXth century, patrilineal lineages farmed uplands fertilised by long fallow periods. From the 1950s, the increasing population density has forced farmers to reduce the fallow period duration. By a selective clearing, farmers have developed and maintained an agroforestry parkland enriched with shea and dawadawa trees, under which they have alternatively grow tubers, cereals and legumes before leaving the land to fallow for some years. Policies to modernise agriculture initiated by Nkrumah’s government have introduced tractor ploughing, fertilisers and insecticides in the region. They have enabled the wealthiest farmers to increase their productivity by farming more acres. Yet, the green revolution practices jeopardise parkland renewal and limit soil fertility reproduction. The bases of a new agrarian system have been laid for a few years. Indeed, the land tenure system, that was initially quite egalitarian, now discriminates against the smallest farms. Some landowners want to reclaim their land to increase their farmed acreage and make the best use of their capital. Thanks to the sale of plots to be built, they can buy tractors, until then only owned by institutions. The tenants cannot claim for new lands and can be evicted from the land they farm.
In a context of widening social inequalities, farmers, either landowners or tenants, want to modify their production system. Many development axes can be found in the communities, such as planting fodder trees, using livestock faeces to fertilise the crops or replacing the fallow period by legume cultivation. On lowlands, most farmers implement more complex cropping systems than the one promoted by the RSSP. The work schedule and the risks are more homogeneously spread out all over the year. Using more fertilisers at the right times could increase the yields without deeply altering the production systems. The land tenure system remains a major obstacle to the development of many initiatives, and this obstacle is not likely to be raised without any third party intervention. The rice sector support project could take part in the adaptation of the land tenure system to ensure the efficiency of the project . The maintenance of water management infrastructures requires a collective management and an equal involvement of the beneficiaries. The non-governmental organisations recruited by the project could initiate a dialogue about this maintenance and land distribution. This dialogue seems fundamental to make the project’s investments durable and to maintain a dynamic agriculture that creates jobs in rural areas.
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A.1 Equipment
Figure A.1 – Main tools used in the study area (N.Brulard)
103 A.2 Price and unit systems used in the study
Figure A.2 – Price system used for the modelling (from interviews and FAO, MOFA and PlanGhana data)
104 Figure A.3 – Unit system used by farmers and traders in the study area
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