Poverty Dimensions of Public Governance and Forest Management ...

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do with the abandoned yam farms of their husbands; this in turn leads them to plant crops
which do well under such conditions, such as groundnuts. In secondary growth areas of the
dry semi-deciduous forests, the labour constraint is less in evidence, and women find it easier
to gain access to adequate labour for clearing, or alternately to do it themselves; forest soils
respond well to minimum tillage, and thus are less demanding in terms of labour than
parkland areas where mounds and ridges have to be made.
g) In situations of growing land scarcity but increasing commercial opportunities, young
ambitious men may seek access to land through hiring, sharecropping and other non-family
circuits. This is to avoid family obligations, and also to gain access to the best land available.
With competition for hiring of prime lands, women have to make do with the less fertile
small family plots. This may result in more individually based farming strategies among men.
h) Partly as a result of (f) above, men tend to farm larger acreages than women (more than
double the average area, though with considerable local variation).
i) User rights are more common in the parkland environment, and frequently reflect relations
between a migrant and an indigene. For example, in Subinso, 86% of those who gain access
to land in this way are migrants; at Nsawkaw, the figure is 64%. This is particularly likely to
occur where increasing scarcity of land encourages land owners to protect their own longterm
rights through ensuring that surplus land is kept in cultivation by others. Migrants are
often preferred in such situations, as their rights are only temporary.
j) As land becomes scarce, leasing tends to become more attractive to migrants; 17% of all
migrants in the sample gained access to land through leasing, while none of the indigenes did
so. Leasing is particularly likely to occur in settlements such as Kokoago (maize) and
Subinso (maize, groundnuts), with a developed commercial sector.
k) Hiring is particularly likely on already stumped land, where landlords can charge a premium
for labour already invested in land ‘improvement’.
l) Land in areas such as Kokoago is frequently hired for long periods (eg. 3 years), to gain
maximum returns from labour invested through intensive rotations (maize/tomatoes/cowpea).
m) Where land is in short supply, as in some high value forest locations, sharecropping displaces
monetary rents and user rights. As in the case of Buoku, this is the preserve of migrants (12%
of all plots are sharecropped, though never by indigenes).
n) Where land is becoming in seriously short supply - again as in Buoku - this tends to be
reflected in the large number of farmers gaining access through taungya arrangements, or
illegal encroachment into the forest reserve; there are, however, additional political factors in
this case.
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