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of the statements on access to land which we are going to make, than by
viewing them in terms of the approaches and methods whereby our
empirical materials have been collected.
After having identified the Dunkwa family lands, their location
and boundaries, by two different but complementary methods, we were
faced with the question of how to collect data on:
- access to these lands;
- the ways in which they are used;
- the nature of the organization oflabour by means of which they
are cultivated.
Considering that out of an estimated 1250 Dunkwa farmers, both
male and female, we had no workable sampling frame, the best we could
think of was to approach them via their family lands and the farms that they
cultivated there. Consequently, we selected four family lands, varying both
in their distance from the centre of Dunkwa and in area; on each of these
lands, we then attempted to locate all the separate' farms' or 'plots' in the
hope of identifying the complete population of individual farmers
cultivating there. However, the sheer size of Amoanda and the large number
offarms situated there (estimated at 500-600), forced us to limit ourselves
to identifying some 250 farmers; as matters stand, we are not ab Ie to say how
representative these are for all Amoanda farmers. Next these farmers so
identified were localized at their Dunkwa houses and interviewed with a set
of general questions amounting to a kind of Farm Census.
At that stage we realized that any information on land use would
need to be very accurate if it was to be of any use. Furthermore, adequate
information on the organization of production and on farming operations
could only be collected in connection with actual cropping and fallow
patterns. We therefore decided to survey a sample ofindividual farms, using
data from the 255 census interviews as our sampling frame, with a view to
producing a detailed plan of each of the sample farms. Accordingly, some
70 farms were surveyed while the farm plans were subsequently used to
interview farmers on farming operations in which they had engaged in the
present as well as in the past season in connection with their various crops.
As the detailed interviews as well as the production of farm plans
meant for the farmers a rather time-consuming involvement with our
research, it proved virtually impossible to adhere to any systematic sampling
design. We had to avail ourselves of all the cooperation individual farmers
were willing and able to give, while trying to avoid too skewed a distribu-
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