A feminist political ecology of farm resource entitlements in Northern Ghana

Abstract

With the unprecedented feminization of agriculture globally, literature has emerged over the past decade suggesting that gender equality in agriculture could be advanced if gaps in access to farm resources between women and men are reduced. This paper examines gendered farm resource entitlements in northern Ghana. Based mainly on six months of immersive qualitative research, this case study draws from and contributes to feminist political ecology scholarship (FPE) on smallholder farming and agricultural development. The analysis describes some of the intensifying gender and intersecting inequalities (e.g., gender and ethnicity) of land access related to development interventions aimed at commercializing farming. Gender disparities in access to agricultural extension, chemical fertilizers, agrochemicals, high yielding seed varieties, tractor services, credit packages and marketing contracts supported by the state, donors and NGOs are also found. FPE is useful for revealing how these gendered resource disparities are related to agricultural commercialization and increasingly erratic rainfall and aridity, making smallholders more vulnerable to land dispossession. Women’s dependence on men to farm while operating under these changing economic and environmental conditions, coupled with their weaker entitlement rights to resources, threatens to push many, particularly ethnic minority women, out of farming altogether. The ways that intersecting identities shape access to land also complicates understandings of the role of community outsiders who are both the dispossessors of land and those who are intensely vulnerable to dispossession. While rural development studies generally consider women’s farm resources compared to men’s, this does little to explain the intensifying intersectional vulnerabilities.

Keywords:

• Gender
• intersectionality
• agriculture
• feminist political ecology
• Ghana
• sub-Saharan Africa

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Dr. Isaac Luginaah and Dr. Tony Weis for their thoughtful feedback on early drafts of this manuscript, as well as to the anonymous reviewers for their feedback. She would also like to acknowledge Geoffrey Penhorwood, Dr. Cameron McCordic and Dr. Yuji Sano for their assistance. Most of all, many thanks go to those at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture in Ghana and all of the communities, farmers and others who assisted with this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by International Development Research Centre; The Africa Institute, Western University; Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Notes on contributors

Siera Vercillo

Siera Vercillo is a Postdoctoral Fellow and Adjunct Professor at the School of Environment, Enterprise and Development at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. Her research interests are broadly located in the fields of feminist geography, political ecology and critical development studies with a focus on agrarian and nutrition transitions, smallholder rural livelihoods, urban food systems and household food security in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly northern Ghana. She holds a PhD in Geography from Western University and other degrees from the Institute of Development Studies and the University of Toronto. [email protected]