ABSTRACT
The large-scale production of industrial crops can shape profoundly agrarian systems in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), especially those characterized by low-input subsistence agriculture, traditional land tenure rules, and very distinct gender roles. This chapter employs a feminist political ecology lens to analyze how the large-scale production of oil palm and jatropha has become an agent of agrarian transformation in Ghana. Overall, there is very visible social differentiation between the groups involved in jatropha and oil palm production such as permanent/seasonal plantation workers and smallholders (i.e. outgrowers, independent growers), compared to groups not involved in the production of these crops (i.e. control groups). Permanent plantation workers seem to gradually from in a distinct social class that diverts most of its labour in waged plantation employment, with little-to-no access to land (in the oil palm site) or the ability to fully cultivate it (in the jatropha site). Conversely, oil palm smallholders are better endowed and have higher incomes compared to other groups in their area, and are thus more likely to benefit disproportionately from income accumulation over time. However, industrial crop production has some important gendered dimensions in both sites. For example, despite benefiting from some indirect off-farm income opportunities (e.g. petty trading in and around plantations), female-headed households seem to be disproportionally affected by the gradual loss of ecosystem services due to landscape conversion for large-scale oil palm and jatropha production. Most notably, women have access to fewer and less well-paid employment opportunities in the two plantations, pointing to the very gendered nature of plantation employment.
