Abstract
The activities of multi-national companies have affected the livelihood of smallholder farmer in the Pru East, though a lot of research work has been done on large scale land acquisition but this study focus on how it affects livelihood asset of smallholder farmers in the Pru East District. Over the past ten years, the Government of Ghana have leased out large tracts of land for investors, mainly foreign investors. Survey research approach was used for the study. A multi-stage sampling technique was employed and a sample size of 332 households was used for the study. The study used five indicators of the Livelihood Effect Index (LEI) espoused by Downing et al., (2001) to determine the effects of large-scale land acquisition on the livelihood of smallholder farming households. Large scale land acquisition has a significant positive moderate effect on the employment, healthcare and food security but, has a significant negative high effect on income levels of smallholder farming households. However, large scale land acquisition has no significant effect on the nutritional status of farming households in the Pru East district of the Bono East region. Kobre and Kadue communities with an LEI of 0.53 suggests that livelihoods of farming households in these two communities are the most effected with large scale land acquisition. The study also recommends that MMDAs must formulate by-laws to ensure that large scale land investors employ people from the host communities of the projects. Keywords: livelihood asset, large scale land acquisition, smallholder farmer, human capital asset, natural capital asset, financial capital asset, social capital asset. DOI: 10.7176/JEES/10-2-08 Publication date: February 29 th 2020
Highlights
In recent times, Ghana has become one of the destinations for large scale land deals in Africa, attracting high foreign investment in the agricultural sector
The activities of land deals of the Solar Harvest Limited, Agroris company from Italy, Smart Oil Ghana limited, Fawoman company and Kirminic Estate Limited in various areas in the Bono East region have displaced several smallholder farmers whose livelihoods depended on the land (Tsikata and Yaro, 2011). The activities of these companies have affected the livelihood of smallholder farmer in the Pru East, though a lot of research work has been done on large scale land acquisition but this study focus on how it affects livelihood asset of smallholder farmers in the Pru East District
The sociodemographic characteristics of farming households considered by this research are age of household head, household size, household income per annum, total acres of farm land owned by households, number of acres of farm land lost by farming households to large scale land investors, sex of household head and the educational level of household head
Summary
Ghana has become one of the destinations for large scale land deals in Africa, attracting high foreign investment in the agricultural sector. One main feature of such large-scale land deals in Ghana has been that lands given to foreign investors are larger than those given to domestic investors. The Food and Agriculture Organisation [FAO], (2008) and Right and Resource Initiative (2012) observe that the phenomenon displaces families from their homes and farmers from their fields. This has the potential to interfere with their livelihoods and deprive them of their basic needs (Thurmond, 2007)
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