Poverty Dimensions of Public Governance and Forest Management ...

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and youth migrate in search of alternative livelihood opportunities. The size of food crop farms
decline, groundnuts and cassava replace maize, and farmers develop risk minimising strategies on
smaller areas of land. Maize production is taken up in other areas with better soils where bush
fallowing is the dominant mode of farming. In these areas farmers find rising prices for maize an
incentive to move into maize production and they can now produce maize more competitively
than those areas formerly using inputs, which they displace. Thus the price of maize on the
domestic market does not take into account the cost of inputs since sufficient maize can be
produced without inputs.
However, introduction of maize into new areas also leads to problems for the poor. Richer
farmers can invest in labour to clear and weed their farms and easily expand the area under
cultivation leading to land scarcity for some. Frequently increased commercialisation of
agriculture has a gender dimension. Within the Mo areas of the northern transition zone where
yam is the major crop the traditional division of labour involved men clearing new plots of land
from fallow and planting these under yam. Women helped in the weeding. When the yams were
harvested women took over the plots and planted groundnuts. In contemporary times, this
division of labour is breaking down. Instead of abandoning the old yam farm to their wives many
men are now planting maize on them. Men have also intensified production by introducing
multiple cropping in which they plant cassava in the yam mounds and continue cropping into a
second year. Many men have also gone into groundnut cultivation since it has a good market
price. Some men now divide their old farm into two portions allocating half to their wife (or
wives) and retaining a half for their own use.
In other areas with variable farm ecologies, the main commercial crops are produced in particular
niches, which are monopolised by the richer men. This may include areas near water sources for
vegetable production, more fertile land, or areas that have formerly been stumped by state
enterprises and projects, which are used for maize production, as at Kokoago. In some areas, the
more fertile lands for commercial crop production are hired out. Poorer people farm on small
areas of family land which may have a long history of cultivation and be less fertile, while those
requiring large plots for commercial production hire the land. Land hiring in these areas ensures
that the best land is retained for those with capital to invest in it. Those with capital also
frequently prefer to hire land for commercial crop production rather than use family land, to avoid
a drain on their capital from the social demands of their extended families. For instance, at
Buoku, large maize farms are usually made on hired or sharecropped land, while those using
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