The land tenure system in Ghana has been identified as one of the key factors that has stunted the growth of the agricultural sector.
This was noted by Dr. Akwasi Mensah-Bonsu, a senior lecturer in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness at the University of Ghana in an interview with the Vaultz News while discussing “Agriculture, the Panacea for Ghana’s Post-COVID recovery”.
According to him, the sector is a very important contributor to the economy and the livelihood of a large proportion of the population depend on it hence, it cannot afford to be neglected.
However, the limited access to lands by the state for an industrialized agric sector due to the type of land tenure system in Ghana is one of the major challenges in the sector. He indicated that the state at one point wanted to change the traditional system but to no avail.
“Our land tenure arrangement unfortunately compared to other countries where the state has much control, in Ghana here the state doesn’t have that much control over our land resources in terms of land. It is traditionally owned and operated either by matrilineal or patrilineal system and there are also few family lands here and there. So that’s the challenge. In times past, the state attempted what we call land buys like what they have in Cote D’Ivoire but it was very difficult and challenging. They couldn’t because the land is already owned by the traditional system and they were not willing to give them up.”
He went on to say that for a large-scale producer to have access to a huge plot of land, then some compensation must be made to ensure smooth transactions.
“In acquiring land, you have to go through the traditional system, sometimes you should be willing and able to compensate a lot of other people on the land so that you can have a bigger plot of land to be able to work with. As a larger scale producer, if you’re not willing to compensate all those smaller holdings so you can aggregate the land and can do industrial production in terms of agric, then it’s going to be difficult.”
Addressing how to navigate through the pandemic without neglecting a large population in the sector, he emphasized the need for large-scale producers to liaise with small-scale farmers as their role is important in the value chain.
“We have some firms which we cannot neglect. If we do that then it means we will be taking a larger chunk of the labour force from the happy workforce. So, what we have to do is, in the midst of the this, even though some large-scale producers producing to the larger market; the export market and supermarket, these small-scale producers have a link up to the large-scale producers in terms of contract farming and other arrangements.”
This he stressed is because of the nature of Ghana’s land tenure system and the way to salvage livelihoods of small-scale farmers as well as improve the sector.
“Meanwhile, the small-scale farmers, they control the land. The nature of the land system in Ghana here means they control the land. The land is family land and therefore before a large-scale producer can get access to land to produce, they have to go through them. So, once you have a reasonable size of land, you have to link up with small scale producers and work with them so they can also have livelihood. You can’t completely ignore them so what we have to do is, aggregate them and all their produce into a larger trunk that we can either feed the industry or cadre force.”
