Livelihood implications of artisanal gold mining in farming communities: insight from the Wa East District, Ghana

The impact of artisanal mining on livelihoods in developing countries is a contentious issue. As a contribution to this subject, the study assessed the implications of artisanal gold mining activities on smallholder agriculture in the Wa East District of Ghana. A descriptive survey design with a mixed methods research approach was used. Primary data were sourced from respondents through interviews, questionnaire administration, and field observation. Five artisanal mining communities were selected based on the intensity of mining activities in them. The study respondents consisted of 290 household heads drawn randomly from 1,050 households. Also, key informants consisting of 5 assembly members and 15 lead artisanal miners were interviewed. The study found artisanal mining to be a dominant livelihood strategy in the district, employing about 76.2% of respondents at various levels. Artisanal mining contribution to household income was higher than food crop farming. Proceeds from mining are used to finance smallholder agriculture. However, the activities of the miners have resulted in the degradation of farmlands. We argued that artisanal mining activities should be aligned with other livelihood options such as agriculture in local communities. The study called for the engagement of local miners and traditional rulers in mineral resource decision-making.

Smallholder agriculture results in stable forest cover in riverine Amazonia

Recent studies point to a rapid increase in small-scale deforestation in Amazonia. Where people live along the rivers of the basin, customary shifting cultivation creates a zone of secondary forest, orchards and crop fields around communities in what was once was old-growth terra firme forest. Visible from satellite imagery as a narrow but extensive band of forest disturbance along rivers, this zone is often considered as having been deforested. In this paper we assess forest disturbance and the dynamics of secondary forests around 275 communities along a 725 km transect on the Napo and Amazon rivers in the Peruvian Amazon. We used high-resolution satellite imagery to define the ‘working area’ around each community, based on the spatial distribution of forest/field patches and the visible boundary between old-growth and secondary forests. Land cover change was assessed between ca. 1989 and 2015 using CLASliteTM image classification. Statistical analyses using community and household-level data from the Peruvian Amazon Rural Livelihoods and Poverty (PARLAP) Project identified the predictors of the extent of forest disturbance and the dynamics of secondary forests around communities. Although shifting cultivation is the primary driver of old-growth forest loss, we find that secondary forest cover which replaces old-growth forests is stable through time, and that both the area and rate of expansion into old-growth forests are modest when compared to forest conversion in Peru for colonization and plantation development. Our findings challenge the notion that smallholder agriculture along rivers is an important threat to terra firme forests in Amazonia and point to the importance of protecting forests on community lands from loggers, colonists and other outsiders.

Strengthening producer organizations to increase market access of smallholder farmers in Uganda

Smallholder agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa is largely exposed to pervasive market failures, translating into missed opportunities and sub-optimal economic behavior. These failures can partly be traced to the importance of economies of scale in procuring inputs and marketing produce, where smallholders face disproportionately high transaction costs. Producer organizations could help to lessen transaction costs; however, only a few farmers in Uganda sell through them. We introduce two interventions aimed at promoting marketing via producer organizations: cash on delivery, and information on sales, and analyze their impacts in an RCT design: We find that providing cash on delivery increases the probability that a member chooses to sell through the group, and hence the volumes bulked by each group. This increase in volumes appears to have enabled groups to secure higher prices for their produce. No significant effect could be found for providing information on sales.

Involution and Enterprise in Rural Areas

This chapter analyses the patterns of poverty, prosperity, and rural transformation in Tanzania through longitudinal research examining livelihoods and asset change in a twenty-year period. We argue that some current measures of rural transformation are inadequate for capturing forms of change that matter to rural Africans. We consider in detail some of the processes that lie behind such change in selected locations in Morogoro region, noting the importance of improvements that are taking place through smallholder agriculture. In conclusion, the article discusses the implications of these findings for agricultural policy while also cautioning about the blindness of our methods to other forms of poverty.