1. Introduction
In recent years, biofuels have rapidly emerged as a major issue for agricultural development, energy policy, and natural resource management. The growing demand for biofuels is being driven by recent high oil prices, energy security concerns, and global climate change [
1]. Consequently, there is growing interest from foreign private investors in establishing biofuel projects in Africa, as well as growing support from bilateral and multilateral donors for incorporating biofuels into government policies and development plans [
1,
2,
3]. Bassey [
3] reveals that many European and American governments, International Financial Institutions such as the World Bank and multinational agribusiness, and oil and transport companies are promoting biofuels as a panacea to world energy needs and the business is touted as a sustainable source of higher income for farmers in Africa and a ready avenue for employment opportunities, especially for the youth [
3]. It is argued that biofuels can help to reduce urban pollution and promote rural development, dealing with poverty alleviation challenges. However, in spite of these much acclaimed positive potentials of biofuel plantations to reinvigorate Africa’s rural areas, there are still misgivings about the negative environmental and social impacts of large-scale commercial biofuel production.
Estimates on the state of biofuel developments in Ghana are mixed. Available data suggest that several companies from various countries have acquired land in Ghana to cultivate biofuel crops for the production of ethanol and biodiesel. The Jatropha projects started taking off well in the country from 2005–2006 and actually reached their peak between 2007 and 2008. A study on the potential impact of large-scale land acquisitions, particularly for biofuel feedstock expansion in Ghana, identified a total of seventeen commercial biofuel developments in Ghana [
4]. Dogbevi [
5] also asserts that over twenty companies from various countries are in Ghana acquiring land to cultivate non-food crops and other crops for the production of ethanol and biodiesel. According to Schoneveld
et al. [
4], fifteen of the seventeen companies are reported to be foreign-owned and/or financed by the Ghanaian Diaspora, with all but one adopting business models that require large-scale feedstock plantations of more than 1000 hectares. They report that although almost half of the foreign companies involved in plantation development plan in time to engage smallholders through outgrower agreements, no such schemes are yet in place. They reveal that thirteen of the foreign companies focus primarily on the cultivation of
Jatropha curcas, a plant which produces non-edible oil seeds, one on cassava and another on oil palm. Schoneveld
et al. [
4] further report that, by August 2009, these companies collectively had access to 1,075,000 hectares of land, 730,000 hectares of which is located in the forest-savannah transition zone of central Ghana’s Brong Ahafo and northern Ashanti Regions.
Even though biofuel production has the potential to provide a new source of agricultural income in rural areas, and a source of improvements in local infrastructure and broader development, the current land grab by corporations for the large-scale and export-driven expansion of biofuel production has ominous implications for local livelihoods in Ghana. The spread of large-scale/commercial production of biofuel crops, particularly Jatropha curcas, in Ghana has raised concerns from civil society organizations, local communities and other parties. This paper therefore seeks to contribute to the debate on the socio-economic implications of industrial plantations of Jatropha curcas in Ghana, focusing on land grabbing and alienation, impact on food production and security, and impact on employment and income generation.
2. Data and Methods
Based on expert advice from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of Ghana, the study was conducted in 11 Jatropha communities spanning the major agro-ecological zones and political divisions across Ghana—Lolito and Adidome in the Volta Region; Old Akrade in the Eastern Region; Kobre, Bredie-Camp, Kadelso and Ahenekom in the Brong Ahafo Region; Agogo in the Ashanti Region; and Kpachaa, Kusawgu, and Diare in the Northern Region (
Figure 1). Methods of data collection included questionnaire survey, interviews and focus group discussions. A total of 234 respondents were drawn from the 11 communities for the survey using semi-structured questionnaires. A total of 27 different key informant interviews and 64 different focus group discussions (FGDs) were also conducted across the 11 study communities (
Table 1). The key informants comprised of opinion leaders, local government representatives and the local chiefs and their elders. Similarly, participants of the FGDs were individuals who were knowledgeable and had interest in issues concerning Jatropha investments. These included opinion leaders, local farmers who lost land to Jatropha plantations, employees of Jatropha companies, chiefs and their elders and the youth. The participants were identified and selected after administering the questionnaires and interviews. Each focus group was usually made up of about 8–10 homogenous participants. Separate discussions were held with different groups as listed above as well as with people of different gender. The large number of FGDs was due to efforts to capture the views of inhabitants of cottages located close to the study communities who were considered part of those communities.
Because of rural sensitivities, initial contact with the respondents was negotiated with the assistance of community administrators such as the Assemblyman or Unit Committee Chairman, who provided the initial list of possible respondents. Subsequent respondents were selected by snowballing. Even though snowball sampling is a non-probability sampling technique and may be subject to biases, it was a useful sampling technique in this study since the research subjects were difficult to locate. Even so, care was taken to minimize the biases by trying to approximate random selection as much as possible. Respondents were residents in the communities who were affected by Jatropha cultivation—either Company workers or people who lost land to the Companies. A total of eight Jatropha Companies operated in the areas studied—Biofuel Africa, Galton Agro Ltd., Kimminic Corporation, Jatropha Africa, Savannah Black Farming and Farm Management Ltd., Anuanom Industries (Anuanom Farms), Integrated Tamale Fruit Company (ITFC) and ScanFarm (formerly, ScanFuel).
Responses obtained through the questionnaire administration were assigned numerical codes and SPSS was used to summarize and analyze the data. Simple descriptive statistics and frequencies were generated. Cross tabulations of relevant variables were also done to reveal patterns and relationships. Differences in number of respondents reported in the results are due to respondents’ inability to answer some of the questions. The analyses were only based on valid responses. These have been explained where they occur in the text.
Table 1.
Study sites and corresponding number of respondents and Jatropha Companies.
Table 1.
Study sites and corresponding number of respondents and Jatropha Companies.
Name of Study Site | Number of Household Questionnaires Administered | Number of Key Informant Interviews | Number of Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) | Jatropha Company | Country of Origin of Company | Size of Land Acquired (ha) | Cultivation Model |
---|
Adidome | 12 | 2 | 11 | Galton Agro Ltd. | Israel | 100,000 * | Jatropha-Industrial scale |
Old Akrade | - | 1 | 5 | Annuamom Industries | Ghana | 405 ** | Jatropha-Industrial scale |
Kobre | 50 | 3 | 9 | Kimminic Corporation | Canada | 13,000 * | Jatropha-Industrial scale |
Bredie-Camp | - | 4 | 11 | Kimminic Corporation |
Kadelso | 52 | 4 | - | Jatropha Africa | United Kingdom | 120,000 * | Jatropha-Industrial scale |
Ahenekom | 5 | 2 | 8 | Savannah Black Farming and Farm Mgt Ltd | United States | 202 ** | Jatropha-Industrial scale |
Agogo | 30 | 4 | 7 | ScanFarm (formally ScanFuel) | Norway | 400,000 * | Jatropha and food crops-Industrial scale |
Lolito | 35 | 2 | 13 | Biofuel Africa | Norway | 27,000 * | Jatropha-Industrial scale |
Kpachaa | 50 | 1 | - | Biofuel Africa |
Kusawgu | - | 2 | - | Biofuel Africa |
Diare | - | 2 | - | Integrated Tamale Fruit Company (ITFC) | Ghana | 10 ** | Pilot Jatropha plantation; Mango outgrower scheme |
Total | 234 | 27 | 64 | | | | |
Figure 1.
Map of Ghana showing the study sites and associated Jatropha Companies in parenthesis.
Figure 1.
Map of Ghana showing the study sites and associated Jatropha Companies in parenthesis.
4. Discussion
The rush for biofuels has been largely driven by three main issues: climate-change mitigation, energy security and agricultural development. The idea of producing energy from a reproducible source is readily appealing. However, biofuels relying on large-scale adoption of intensive monoculture practices are almost certain to impact negatively on people and livelihoods. In areas where agricultural lands are already scarce, shifting from fossil fuels to biofuels would exacerbate existing land problems and create particular challenges to food supplies for the poor due to a shift from food cropping to fuel cropping. The situation in Ghana is that of large-scale acquisition of active or fallow agricultural lands for Jatropha plantations causing farmers to look for new farm lands or reduce their area under cultivation.
In Ghana, studies on the impact of large-scale/commercial production of biofuels on local livelihoods are very scarce. Few studies [
4,
8,
9,
10,
11,
12] attempt to assess the current and potential effect of commercial biofuel production on local communities. Even though the biofuel industry in Ghana is still in its early stages, these studies reveal that commercial biofuel production impacts significantly on the livelihoods of local people. For example, German
et al. [
9] report as follows: “Many of the purported ecological and rural livelihood benefits of the biofuel industry have not materialized. Widespread deforestation, the failure of many companies to deliver on promises, heavy reliance by companies on short-term employees, barriers to market entry, and risks borne by outgrowers have undermined the industry’s promise… The losers tend to be customary land users whose livelihoods are undermined by plantation expansion and who face the greatest difficulty in capturing benefits” [
9] (p. 1). The failure of the Jatropha Companies in this study to honor their promises of building schools, clinics, roads,
etc. for the various communities might have been a deliberate deception of local people in an attempt to win community support for the commencement of their projects.
Since the rural economy of Ghana is largely agrarian, securing rights to land is a central issue in rural parts of Ghana, with respect to livelihoods, food security, economic growth, and human rights. It is therefore not surprising that land loss, leading to reduced landholdings, shortening fallow periods, increased cropping intensity and, ultimately, food insecurity, were the immediate consequences of the establishment of Jatropha plantations in the study communities. More than 80% of the lands in Ghana is under customary ownership [
13,
14,
15]. These customary lands are held by various stools or skins (see below), families or clans, and are managed by custodians—chiefs or family heads [
16]. By virtue of this, the chiefs hold the allodial interest (see below), which is the highest proprietary interest known to exist in customary land [
15,
16,
17,
18,
19]. This gives the chiefs the right to lease large areas of customary lands to investors without consulting the current land users. Thus, the boom in biofuels feedstock cultivation in Ghana has given rise to the alienation of some local communities from communally owned lands [
11].
A stool refers to a particular land-owning group represented by a stool chief. It also refers to a community governance or administrative structure similar to dynasties [
20]. A skin in northern Ghana is the equivalent of a stool in southern Ghana. The “allodial” title is coined on a Latin term “allodium” used in feudal medieval Europe (1241) originally to designate the relationship of Simon de Montfort to some of his lands in France. It describes an absolute power of allocation but not necessarily a title of personal use [
21].
Nyari [
12] narrates a story of how a Norwegian biofuel company took advantage of Ghana’s traditional system of communal land ownership and the current climate and economic pressure to claim and deforest large tracts of land in the Kusawgu area in Northern Ghana with the intention of creating “the largest Jatropha plantation in the world”. In this area, like most parts of Ghana, over 80 percent of the land is held under communal ownership and more than 70 percent of this land is managed by traditional rulers or chiefs on behalf of the members of their traditional areas. He reports that “bypassing official development authorization and using methods that hark back to the darkest days of colonialism, this investor claimed legal ownership of these lands by deceiving an illiterate chief to sign away 38,000 hectares of land with his thumbprint” [
12] (p. 1). This is a clear case of land grabbing and community disempowerment. Such massive land alienations fail to appreciate the African meaning and value of land to the community. For the affected communities, it signifies an ominous future where the community’s sovereignty, identity and their sense of community is lost because of the fragmentation that the community will suffer.
The study also revealed that the Jatropha Companies had very little or no consultation with current land users before the commencement of their projects. This affected the quantum and type of compensation offered, generally regarded to be inadequate by the farmers. These shortcomings were partly due to illiteracy on the part of the farmers, the lack of biofuel policy and legal framework guiding investments, and possibly reinforced by the land tenure arrangements described above and therefore the Companies found no need to consult and adequately compensate the land users. Schoneveld
et al. [
4] report that in all the biofuel plantations assessed in the central Ghanaian regions of Brong Ahafo and Ashanti, households were required to relinquish landholdings for the purpose of plantation development. Directly affected households at the majority of plantation areas were not consulted by the Biofuel Company, nor did they formally assent to transferring their land. They maintain that, with the exception of one Company that promised to pay approximately US$ 1 per acre per year to those losing land, no formal compensation measures have been proposed by other companies or by the relevant Traditional Authorities. “Essentially, the Traditional Authorities have the authority to re-allocate community land at their discretion, often with no formal downward accountability to community members who enjoy no formal rights to the land they use” [
4] (p. 4). The high dependency on on-farm activities creates high household vulnerability to external shocks of this kind.
Recounting the local impacts of large-scale land acquisitions for biofuel plantations, Schoneveld
et al. [
4] revealed one case in which an area of approximately 800 hectares was claimed by a Company for Jatropha cultivation (from a 15,000 hectare lease). They indicate that an estimated 55% of the land area was formerly under usufruct rights, forming part of a system of shifting cultivation, with the remaining land under secondary forest cover. About 70 households from three communities were involuntarily vacated from their lands following the 2008 growing season without any form of restitution. For two of the villages this equated to between 40% and 50% of households. They report that, on average, nearly 60% of the total landholdings of those households that lost their land were acquired by the Company. Only 20 percent of households were able to obtain some replacement land, with most households unsuccessful in recovering both the quantity and quality of land lost to the plantation. These households cited increasing land scarcity and land quality concerns as key obstacles. They assert that settler farmers, most of who migrated from the northern part of Ghana, were the worst affected as they lost disproportionate amounts of land, with almost 75 percent of land losers stemming from this group despite being a minority. They maintain that the situation is more critical because of the absence of a biofuel policy to guide the acquisition of land for large-scale biofuel plantations and protect the vulnerable and the poor from land alienation.
Similar land grabs are occurring elsewhere in Africa. Millions of hectares are being grabbed with little concern for the poor who are bound to face displacement and for the impact that this will have on family farms and other small-scale farms and food production on the continent. It is reported that a South Korean firm, Daewoo Logistics, plans to buy a 99-year lease on over a million hectares of land in Madagascar for the production of 5 million tonnes of corn a year by 2023, and to use another 120,000 hectares for the production of palm oil [
2,
22]. The deal is estimated to cost the Company about USD$ 6 billion over 25 years and is acclaimed as the biggest of its kind in the world. It is claimed that the land to be parceled off to Daewoo Logistics covers arable land about half the size of Belgium [
2] and, for a mostly arid country with three food crisis situations in five years, this is a huge challenge indeed. Although the crops are said to be for food, the lesson for land and land rights is the same for biofuels. In Tanzania, there is a proposed plan to cultivate sugarcane on over 400,000 hectares of the Wami Basin by a Swiss Company in which it is estimated that more than 1000 small scale rice farmers will be displaced [
11]. Similarly, in Uganda, plans to clear off half of the Mabira Forest Reserve located at the edge of Lake Victoria met with strong civil resistance in October 2007 [
11]. That move would have destroyed the source of livelihood of several thousand households.
According to Ewing and Msangi [
23], several studies have identified linkages between the usage of feedstocks in biofuel production and international food price increases. These studies indicate that food prices are expected to continue to rise over the next decade in response to biofuel consumption targets adopted in the U.S. and E.U. They report that despite these indications, some countries for whom food security and poverty reduction are still an issue have initiated crop-based biofuel development and set forth national blending targets for energy use within the transportation sector.
Large-scale agricultural enterprises can produce numerous benefits to affected communities. One of the most obvious and direct benefits is employment and income generation. This research showed that, for people who gained employment with the Jatropha plantations, the income they received was supplementary to agricultural income. The employees were therefore better off. Schoneveld
et al. [
4] report that, two large foreign companies involved in Jatropha plantations in Ghana estimate that 60 full-time employees will be required per 1000 hectares under cultivation, representing 0.06 employees per hectare. At the plantation that they studied in Ghana, approximately 120 persons (both part time and full time) were employed for an area of approximately 800 hectares (0.15 employees per hectare). However, they state that as this plantation is still in the labor-intensive land preparation and planting phase, this number will likely reduce. There is therefore significant risk that many employees will lose steady employment once trees mature and expansion ceases. They claim that this has already occurred at one Jatropha plantation (100 hectares), where the original workforce of approximately 50 reduced to four within four years. Thus, sustainability of jobs provided by biofuel plantations is a key issue.