CSPS seminar: How do farmers make decisions to sell farmland?

The presentation unpacks the complex decision-making processes amongst cocoa farmers who are giving away their farmlands for mining concessions in Southwestern Ghana. The study is premised on a qualitative research design involving primarily cocoa farmers, small-scale miners, and mining financiers. The discussion focuses on how and why state policies, land tenure, inheritance systems, and the decreasing value of cocoa relative to gold, influence farmers’ decisions to sacrifice the generational benefits of their farmlands for immediate wealth gains. Considering these findings, the study makes recommendations that will contribute to the growth and sustainability of the cocoa industry in Ghana.

Dr. Antoinette Cecilia Tsiboe-Darko is a Social Development Analyst and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Social Policy Studies, University of Ghana. She lectures in Social and Public Policy at the graduate level at the University of Ghana. She does research in natural resource management, child marriage, gender and agriculture, social protection, decentralisation, volunteering and philanthropy.  She has built advocacy and policy support over the years in different aspects of social development and governance impacting on health, poverty and education. The scope of her consultancies addresses matters relating to community development, citizen participation and political process evaluation for effective planning and decisions making. She serves on several boards including the Advisory Board of the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources in Ghana, the Steering Committee of the Ghana Skills Development Fund, The Heritage and Culture Society of Ghana and the Committee for Volunteer Infrastructure in Ghana. Sh