Land, Gender, and Class Relations in Ghana’s Cassava Frontier

Lands for domestic production in rural areas have increasingly shrunk and the rules of access have changed as corporate land grabs intensify in many parts of the Global South. These occurrences are outcomes of processes that are packaged in state policies that promote market intervention in agricultural production. In Ghana, state initiatives promote large-scale industrial cassava production in rural areas. This article discusses land grabs in cassava frontier communities, their impacts on land access rules, and social relations. It is argued that while land, gender, and class relations change as a result of competition over, and commodification of, land resources, community institutions, namely chiefs and families, play significant roles that legitimize dispossession of social groups whose land-use rights are derived from other hierarchies. The changes in production relations in the communities are linked to processes linked to older commodity production. Similar changes have occurred at the household level as circuits of commodity production integrate within domestic production. The article highlights different struggles by women and migrants to renegotiate their access rules and their local citizenship status.