INTERVENCION INDEPENDIENTE 6710 Fomentar el Apego

Semi-arid northern Ghana remains a great paradox on virtually every front. At least 80 percent of the population is engaged in agriculture; yet, one in every five persons is food insecure, while one in every nine children dies of malnutrition before age five (Biederlack and Rivers, 2009, p. 14). Particularly striking is the fact that subsistence- oriented food crop farmers are those who suffer from chronic malnutrition and food insecurity (Biederlack and Rivers, 2009; Devereux, 2009). The region is also mired in abject poverty. The Ghana Statistical Service estimates that nearly 88 percent of the population subsist on less than one dollar a day, compared to barely 20 percent in southern Ghana (Ghana Statistical Service, 2000, p. 13). A longitudinal study by anthropologist Ann Whitehead clearly revealed the persistence of poverty in the region. Among households in the north-east, the study showed that “(62 per cent) were in the same poverty category in 1989 as they had been in 1975”; while another 13 per cent were much poorer over that same period (Whitehead, 2006, p. 288).

Three major reasons have been proffered in the literature to explain these paradoxes. These reasons include recurring droughts and climate variability, British colonial rule, and neoliberal development policies (Songsore, 2003; Yaro, 2013). As will be shown in subsequent sections of the paper, northern Ghana falls within the southern fringe of the Sahel . It therefore experiences severe droughts and climatic variability, with important implications for agriculture and food security.

A key part of Ghana’s colonial political economy was that the colonial administrators established a system of migratory labour from the northern to southern parts of the Gold Coast (Songsore, 2003). In order to intensify the exploitation of natural resources, colonial officials treated northern Ghana as a labour reserve, where active men were recruited to work in mines and cocoa

plantations in the southern parts of the country. The construction of road and railway infrastructure also relied on labour from northern Ghana. A number of mechanisms were used to enforce this labour recruitment from the north. Among the most notable mechanisms included recruitment by force and coercion, and asking local chiefs to supply a given number of young men in exchange for money (Abdul-Korah, 2004). This labour recruitment deprived the northern territories of its labour power and affected the level of food production and hunger. The historical pattern of north- south migration has persisted to the contemporary period, and continues to intensify under different political and economic contexts (Songsore, 2003; Yaro, 2013).

Around the late 1970s, the Ghanaian economy slipped into a debt crisis. The crisis was precipitated by a combination of factors, not the least of which included the oil price hikes in the early 1970s, concurrent worsening terms of trade, balance of payment problems, severe droughts, and food shortages (Hutchful, 2002; Pearce, 1992). The government responded to the crisis by negotiating for an economic recovery loan of over $1.4 billion from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (Pearce, 1992, p. 15). The loan came with several conditionalities, which were the standard features of structural adjustment programs (SAP) in sub-Saharan Africa. More than any other sector in the Ghanaian economy, agriculture saw the most intensive restructuring (Hutchful, 2002). Noteworthy among structural changes included the removal of subsidies for fertilizers, seeds and insecticides. The government further retrenched agricultural extension services and dismantled marketing boards that serviced smallholder input requirements (Hutchful, 2002; Pearce, 1992). Other policy measures included increasing support for large landholders, and the abandoning of smallholder development. The government further lifted all restrictions on foreign direct investments and privileged food security policies that are based on international commerce (Hutchful, 2002).

These reforms unleashed profound social and economic transformations in the Ghanaian countryside, marking a great watershed in the viability of smallholder farming (Pearce, 1992). The majority of small farmers were squeezed out of

agriculture as their purchasing power became dramatically eroded. Additionally, input and output markets became volatile, constricted and competitive. Local produce such as rice, maize, meat and poultry faced stiff competition from highly subsidized and cheap imports from Europe, Asia and North America (Hutchful, 2002). The effects of structural adjustment programs were geographically uneven across the country. Northern Ghana experienced the most severe impacts because of general underdevelopment and limited opportunities for non-farm incomes (Konadu- Agyemang, 2000; Songsore, 2003). Thus, structural adjustment intensified the already uneven regional development in Ghana. With persistent poverty and reduced agricultural productive capacity (Whitehead, 2006), a large number of small farmers were driven to cities where they worked as day labourers for minimal wages (Abdul- Korah, 2011).

Today, the political economic patterns initiated during colonial rule, together with the impacts of structural adjustment programs, are still lingering in northern Ghana (Yaro, 2013). Food importation continues to undercut domestic production in many ways (Laube et al., 2012). Contemporary agricultural policies emphasize intensification of the food sector, often to the benefit of large-scale farmers. The post-millennium period has seen more radical changes in the northern regional political economy. As part of opening up the country to foreign investments, many transnational corporations have been granted long-term leases for biofuel and mining projects in semi-arid northern Ghana (Tsikata and Yaro, 2013). Corporate farmland acquisitions have meant the curtailment of access to land by smallholder farmers. Consequently, many farmers have lost their livelihoods (Tsikata and Yaro, 2013), further spurring migration from villages. It is within this context that we examine farmers’ perceptions of and resilience to the ongoing impacts of climate change.