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and planted first with maize and then intercropped with cassava, the cassava
is intercropped with tree seedlings immediately after the maize harvest has
ended. As it will take about four to five years before the trees will bear, the
cassava might after about a year be replaced with another food crop,
provided the farmer can keep the plot well-weeded. Once lime trees start
to bear fruit, extra labour-input for reaping is required, for a kind of inbetween
harvest in about September and for the main harvest in
December. 11 As reaping may only be possible after subjecting the farm to
a thorough weeding, these labour requirements can be considerable. And
they will hinder the growing of food crops because they arise at the time
when, during the second season, the maize has to be planted (in September)
and harvested (in December).
The growing of food crops, of course, is not restricted to maize,
cassava, plantain and the women's vegetables, but also includes smaller
acreages of sweet potato, yam, cow peas, sugarcane and cocayam. The
latter, especially grown in newly-planted cocoa farms, is popular for its
leaves with which nkontombire, a type of spinach dish, is cooked. The
common variety of sugar cane, a crop which is frequently found in low-lying
water-logged areas especially on river banks, cannot be used for sugar
extraction; it is a cash crop which enters the market as 'chewing cane'.
All other food crops are grown both as subsistence and as cash
crops. In some cases a new plot is cleared and planted with the express
purpose of selling the entire crop. Occasionally, farmers contract to sell all
that a farm will yield to visiting dealers while nothing is showing but the
young plants. Quite frequently also, small amounts (one tray, one basket)
of food crops that are grown for household consumption are sold with a
view to meet an immediate need for cash.
It may well be, however, that a larger proportion of such food crops
as cassava and maize is eventually sold in processed form. As cassava will
not usually keep more than a few days after uprooting, it is either finely
grated and dried over a fire to become gari - a favourite ingredient for
making instant porridge - or cut into larger pieces and dried in the sun as
kokonte. Many more women - for foodstuffs are invariably processed by
women - are engaged in the preparing of kenkey, 12 a fermented maize
dough. Rolled into balls and wrapped in maize leaves, this has long been
bought for the same purpose for which we would buy bread; nowadays,
especially in the urban areas, it is slowly replaced in the Ghanaian diet by
wheaten bread. 13
Maize grown for household consumption is stored on the cob and
11