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The land that is cleared and cultivated in this way will remain his or
hers for life after which, in principle, it passes (or returns) to the family. This
does not mean that the land then becomes available for re-allocation to
other lineage members, but rather that it will pass to the matrilineal
descendants of the deceased's mother, i.e. to the issue of all the uterine
sisters who together usually decide on one individual successor (de Graft­
Johnson 1974; Woodman 1976: 169-70).
Another implication of the rules concerning land allocation is that
no lineage member can claim the possession of land that he or she is no
longer cultivating. But the question then arises of whether a peasant farmer
who cultivates land according to a fallow system can be assumed to have
ceased to occupy a plot of land. Rattray points out that if a piece of land
under fallow has reverted to mfofoa (short-time fallow up to 5 years) it still
counts as 'occupied' if there are any fruit-bearing trees standing there,
and more especially if the farmer still has a harvestable plantain farm on
that piece of land (Rattray 1929: 361). Given the common pattern of
planting plantain seedlings alongside maize and cassava on a newly cleared
plot, and given the fact that plantain trees are likely to bear for three years
while the maize will be harvested within half-a-year and the last cassava will
be uprooted after about eighteen months, the farmer would occupy this plot
for about another year-and-a-half while on the whole it is already reverting
tomfofoa.
It would seem, then, that once the plaintain stops bearing, about
three years after the initial clearing, the farmer could lose his claim and some
other lineage member could effectively ask permission to cultivate the land.
If this were indeed the case, the fallow (or land rotation) system which the
Akan peasant farmers have long applied 15 could never work, and they
would be condemned to engage in shifting cultivation. The intention
behind leaving a piece of land fallow is to re-cultivate it after a number of
years. In other words, a farmer does not abandon any land that is under
fallow; on the contrary, the idea is to hold on to it until such time that,
needing it for cultivation, the decision is taken to clear it anew. Although
in the area of research the average fallow is about 2-3 years, some farmers
continue to occupy land after it has lain fallow for 5-10 years without anyone
protesting. Moreover, many farmers have divided their land into four or
more plots of which two are in different stages of cultivation while the others
are under fallow for varying lengths of time. It is much more likely,
therefore, that Ollennu is correct in stating as a rule that land is (only!)
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