Farmer resistance to agriculture commercialisation in northern Ghana. Issue 4 (3rd April 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Vercillo, Siera; Hird-Younger, Miriam
• Is Part Of: Third world quarterly. Volume 40:Issue 4(2019)
• Page Start: 763
• Page End: 779
• Publication Date: 2019-04-03
• Subjects: Resistance -- agriculture -- development -- postcolonial -- Ghana -- sub-Saharan Africa; Developing countries -- Economic conditions -- Periodicals; Developing countries -- Politics and government -- Periodicals; 909.09724
• DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2018.1552076
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0143-6597

Abstract

Abstract: Drawing on postcolonial literature and theories of farmer resistance, this article provides an empirically based alternative explanation of African farmer behaviours to narratives that blame them for their lack of technology adoption. Based on six months of ethnographic immersion in one district in the Northern Region of Ghana a, we identify the ways that farmers defy commercial agriculture investment, government services and non-governmental organisation (NGO) project interventions aimed at intensification, and describe their reasons for doing so. This study interprets farmers' acts of defiance, such as side-selling or falsely weighting their products, as insights into everyday acts of resistance. We find that throughout Ghana's postcolonial period, agriculture intensification policy and practice have produced an environment where various development actors and farmers have both a sense of entitlement and mistrust of each other. Farmers' acts of sabotage may be spaces where they make rational choices based on experiences of historical antecedence, including decades of failed development projects, elite corruption and mismanagement, degrading ecologies and donor hegemony.