A political ecology of high-input agriculture in northern Ghana

Abstract

This study traces the trajectory of policy responses to food insecurity in northern Ghana. Historically, the path to agricultural development has been narrowly focused upon deploying technology to increase per capita food production. In the contemporary context, there is a renewed focus on a ‘Green Revolution’ type of agriculture. Combining village-level fieldwork and geographical perspectives in political ecology, this paper investigates farmer responses to these forms of agricultural intensification. It is argued that input-intensive agriculture is deeply contradictory in the northern Ghanaian context. Agricultural intensification is not only ill-suited to the prevailing political economy and ecology of production, but also undermines small farmers’ agency in solving day-to-day farming problems. The findings further reveal how high-input technologies, especially hybrid seeds, are politicized even at the household level of production. From a policy perspective, the findings suggest the strong need to encourage food security initiatives that are sensitive to local context, existing farmer knowledge, and social relations of production. More broadly, the paper contributes to the ongoing debates concerning the form and necessity for a ‘new Green Revolution’ in Africa.

Keywords:

• food security
• food policy
• gender politics
• political ecology
• northern Ghana

Acknowledgements

Karen Van Kerkoerle assisted with the preparation of the map and the timeline graph. We thank Isaac Luginaah, William Moseley and Godfred Boateng for thoughtful comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The paper was originally presented in Los Angeles, California, at an organized session at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers. We thank Edward Carr and Matthew Schnurr for their constructive feedback during the session. Finally, we appreciate the useful suggestions from two anonymous reviewers. We are entirely responsible for any remaining shortcomings in interpretation.

Funding

Fieldwork for this research was funded by the International Development Research Centre, Canada; the Centre for International Governance Innovation, Canada; and the University of Western Ontario, Canada.

Notes

1. During the colonial period, the area that was referred to as Northern Territories is now called northern Ghana, and encompasses three administrative regions, namely: Northern Region, Upper East Region and Upper West Region.

2. We do not have archival evidence to consider the pre-colonial conditions of food security, or the role colonial rule played in fostering food insecurity in the Northern Territories.

3. All these narratives are from colonial officers’ perspectives. The evidence might therefore be prejudiced, considering that colonial and postcolonial administrators often use exaggerated, misconceived, and crisis narratives to describe African agriculture and landscape change (e.g. see Fairhead & Leach, 1996).

4. Jongorro and Hemang are pseudonyms for the actual villages where fieldwork was conducted.