SIERRA LEONE maq 4ª.indd - agrilife - Europa

labour groups in order to look after the different
plots (especially for labour intensive rice
production and during the harvesting period of
coffee and cocoa). Smallholders maintain strong
bonds at the village level which allow them to
secure access to other inputs such as seeds. The
exchange of the above mentioned inputs is based
on the notion of reciprocity. As explained by Ellis
(2000) “reciprocity may involve social norms of
sharing and redistribution which are designed
to ensure that all members of the community
survive irrespective of the year to year productive
performance of individual households”. Other
authors have denominated this behaviour as “the
economy of affection” (Hyden, 1980) or “the
moral economy” (Scott, 1976)
Another important institutional factor is that
farm household land decisions across the country
are not entirely independent of the decisions
made by their Paramount Chiefs (particularly
regarding access to land to foreigners or solving
land disputes with returnees); however it is
common that decisions on crop cultivation is
made at the household level46 . Land market
transactions (renting, selling or buying) are
therefore strongly reduced by costmary rules.
Although selling and buying can be said to
be non-existent, the option of long term land
leasing is slowly becoming more frequent due
to government involvement. For instance, the
notion that the enlarged farm-household family
(including the dead and the unborn) has to be
taken into account in land transactions represents
a crucial bottleneck. Likewise, the short (1-2
years) time horizon of renting agreements,
inhibits renters’ investments in facilities (such as
irrigation, drainage, processing constructions,
etc.) and in permanent crops (trees), resulting,
in the very end, in a crucial limiting factor
for growth of land and labour productivity. In
this context, where land is not considered to
46 The head of the family selects the main crops for
cultivation (i.e. rice or cash crops) and the wife focuses
on food crops around the house (mix of vegetables, root
crops, etc), (expert knowledge – Dr. Alpha Lakoh)
belong to individuals but rather to the extended
families and the village, land markets are largely
constrained.
7.2 Income Calculation, Poverty Level
and Productivity Analysis
In order to account for the existing socioeconomic
connections between farm households
and their village or chiefdom, two approaches
were implemented when estimating smallholders’
agricultural income (off-farm incomes were
not accounted for in quantitative terms in this
analysis). In the first one, a Neoclassic approach
is followed and thus market values are used in
order to impute the costs of all inputs employed
at the farm level (i.e. household labour, hired
labour, seeds, etc.) and non-marketed output.
A second approach denominated ‘Peasant
Farming’ is followed to explicitly consider that
farm households in Sierra Leone are embedded
in a village/chiefdom network which allows them
to reduce direct and indirect/transaction costs
associated to hiring labour or securing access to
key inputs such as seeds or tools, as well as the
high value strategic function of non-marketed
output (to a great extent self-consumed).
Under the Neoclassical approach results are
not entirely capturing the inter-farm-household
relations and farm net income is unrealistically
low. For instance, by ignoring the institutional
background, the majority of farmers in the
Northern region were deemed unviable to the
point that simple reproduction of the farming
system would not be even ensured; and thus
only the cash croppers in the Eastern districts
were considered to a great extent viable.
This neoclassical assessment of income and
farmer-householder’s behaviour can be highly
misleading because it does not account for
the fact that farmers in the Northern districts
have managed (or rather struggled) to continue
cropping year after year, greatly due to the given
socio-economic and cultural underpinnings of
village life and environment.
Rural poverty reduction and food security: The case of smallholders in Sierra Leone
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