Participation, Commercialisation and Actor Networks: The Political Economy of Cereal Seed Production

This paper examines the changing framework of cereal seed policy in Ghana from a state-led public sector service in the 1960s to a commercial sector activity in the 2000s, and the implications of these changes. The work argues that attempts to privatise seeds during the 1980s and 1990s under structural adjustment were not very successful, since private sector investors were unwilling to invest in the poorly developed seed sector. Subsequent interventions have built networks of civil society organisations working in conjunction with private and public partnerships to create a social, economic and knowledge infrastructure for the emergence of private seed markets. The paper examines the narratives about seeds that inform and mobilise these networks for the development of commercial seed. It is argued that there is an inherent tension within seed development between the participatory networks of plant breeding and the commercial networks of seed certification and distribution. Participatory breeding is based on farmers’ evaluation of new varieties, incorporation of farmers’ varieties and knowledge into breeding and open access relations between breeders and farmers. Through these relations, farmers also gain access to unreleased varieties, which they experiment with and distribute through their own networks. In contrast with this, commercial networks are concerned with ‘manufacturing’ markets for seeds, where low demand exists and farmers usually multiply their own seeds. This results in strategies that see seeds as objects in themselves that can be appropriated, rather than as products of a largely public process of development. This results in narratives that portray commercial seeds as the panacea for the problems of farmers and depict the main constraints in agriculture as resulting from the lack of reach of commercial seed and agodealers into the rural areas. Thus a commercial Green Revolution is portrayed as the solution to food security issues in Africa. This approach, with its appeals to agricultural modernisation, is effective in mobilising support in the state, since state agricultural organisations are often embedded in agricultural modernisation paradigms. By stressing the importance of the private sector, these approaches appeal to the dominant neoliberal concerns in macroeconomic policy and the increasing power of agribusiness. However, the support of donors and new private foundations for building commercial markets and subsidising commercial seeds and the transaction costs of seed and input markets tends to lock farmers into agribusiness interests and contracts. The assumptions about markets and improved seed serve to marginalise and undermine both the participatory basis on which breeding was organised during the seventies, and the search for more creative and critical solutions to the constraints of agricultural modernisation in the diverse, risky and uncertain environments that characterise much of Africa. The paper examines the new narratives about seeds, the impact of neoliberal reforms on the seed sector, and the interactions and conflicts that characterise the various actor networks that constitute seed development in a case study of the Northern Region of Ghana.DfI

Rising Powers and Rice in Ghana: China, Brazil and African agricultural development

This paper examines the nature of Chinese and Brazilian investments in agricultural development by focusing on the irrigated rice sector in Ghana. It examines this through a historic perspective that traces policy towards the rice sector in Ghana, and the influence of various actors in developing this sector. Investment in the development of commercial rice originated in the 1970s when China developed smallholder demonstration rice projects and the government of Ghana pursued a policy of promoting large scale commercial rice production and smallholder contract farming on irrigation projects, tied to inputs suppliers and food marketers and processors. The paper then traces the changing fortunes of the irrigated rice sector under structural adjustment and government support for private sector investment in irrigated rice development in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This resulted in new investors entering rice production in Ghana, including Brazilian interests, and renewed interests from Chinese investors. It argues that the main trends in commercial rice production have been towards contractual relations in which accumulation occurs through control over supplies of inputs and marketing and that these are defined by the policies of the Ghanaian government. Although Brazilian companies have contributed towards innovation in this sector, they lack support from Brazilian agribusiness and agricultural development institutions. As a result of this their access to technology is constrained by the nature of Ghanaian markets and research establishments, and the lack of institutional embedding of Brazilian technologies within these. However, there are attempt by the Brazilian state to build up markets for machinery and develop joint research, although this occurs outside of rice. Although Chinese companies are absent from the development of rice, they have expressed interests in its future developments and are attempting to build up interactions between inputs supply, seed development and production, which will effectively embed Chinese technologies within Ghanaian research institutions and markets. The future of commercial rice production by these rising powers is likely to develop through expansion of seed development, inputs and machinery markets, and food trading and processing, rather than through a dramatic expansion in large estates. In this Chinese and Brazilian interventions are not markedly different from other agribusiness models

South–South Cooperation in Africa: Historical, Geopolitical and Political Economy Dimensions of International Development

This article examines how neoliberal reforms mediate and influence relationships between emergent powers and African nations centred on agricultural development. It investigates the impact of South–South relations on the nature of development and technical cooperation, aid and investment, and on the configuration of relations between states, farmers and the private sector. It examines the extent to which the experiences of China and Brazil in developing their agriculture result in qualitatively new paradigms for agricultural development, and whether they create new openings for a redefinition of development policy and practice. Moreover, the article assesses whether South–South development cooperation merely reinforces the drive to capital accumulation unleashed by global economic liberalisation, reflecting strategies by emergent powers to acquire new markets for agricultural technology, inputs, services and new sources of raw materials. In conclusion, the article questions the extent to which alternative paradigms for development cooperation can be created within the institutional framework created by neoliberal reform

Expanding Agri?business: China and Brazil in Ghanaian Agriculture

This article examines the extent, framing and structure of Chinese and Brazilian investments in Ghana. It outlines the changing political economy of the agrarian sector, in the context of market liberalisation and the rise of agri?business. The article examines the specificities of Chinese agricultural investments in Ghana in relation to wider investments and Chinese interests in the country. It also examines Brazilian investments within the Ghanaian agricultural sector in relation to the expansion of Brazilian agri?business and its integration into the global economy. Finally, it discusses the impact of these developments on Ghanaian agriculture and society