Making a living in the cocoa frontier, Western Ghana: Diversifying incomes in a cocoa economy
Knudsen, M.H.
Geografisk Tidsskrift-Danish Journal of Geography 107(2): 29-44
2007
ISSN/ISBN: 0016-7223 DOI: 10.1080/00167223.2007.10649567Document Number: 519549
The literature on livelihoods in rural Africa has for the past decadedocumented and discussed the growing importance of non-farm income for rural livelihoods and often linked this to an increasing divorce of rural livelihoods from farming and land. This paper challenges the view that the increasing importance of income earned on non-farm activities is a direct expression of processes of deagrarianisation. Drawing on empirical evidence from recent research in the Ghanaian cocoa frontier, the paper shows that a growing importance of income from non-farm activities is evident, but that income from cocoa is still the determining factor for most households' income and thereby for the demand for non-farm goods and investment in the non-farm sector. By identifying two overall factors explaining the level of income diversification, the paper questions how generally applicable processes of deagrarianisation are in the Ghanaian case. Firstly, the actual crop cultivated and its price and marketing possibilities are of great importance for a farmer's choice to engage and stay in the agricultural sector or to diversify into non-farm activities. Secondly, different dynamics are evident between settlements dominated by either migrant or indigenous households, mainly due to unequal access to land. The paper argues that what on a general scale may look like processes of deagrarianisation during the last decade to a large extent can be explained by migrants without access to land who engage full-time in the nonfarm sector and by cocoa farmers diversifying their incomes, but not leaving a deteriorated agriculture.