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Paper short abstract:

This paper argues that the conditions of urban/peri-urban smallholder farmers in Accra highlight both the role of the state in deepening precarity, and nature of the social contract to address the precarity of smallholder agriculture and restore the substantive citizenship of farmers.

Paper long abstract:

This paper is based on a study of urban and peri-urban agriculture. The paper argues that urban and peri-urban farmers, who are self-employed, share the vicissitudes of rural smallholders who make a living producing food for themselves and for rural and urban markets under conditions of self-exploitation and immiseration. In Ghana, which is part of Africa of the trade economy, agricultural export commodity production dominates the farming landscape and the economy in terms of its contribution to GDP and to the cyclical crises of commodity prices and the economy. These commonalities notwithstanding, urban and peri-urban farming have specific characteristics and conditions that influence the fortunes of its practitioners. Proximity to urban populations and produce markets, their situation as long-term migrants and their insertion into global value chains as consumers of imported agro-chemicals, seeds and other inputs, has shaped their key relationships, conditions of production and their livelihood outcomes. It is these same conditions that have deepened the precarity of work in the urban and peri-urban agriculture, and have influenced their strategies for survival and building resilience. The absence of employers highlights the important role of the state and state policies in deepening precarity and also in the nature of the social contract that would reduce the precarity of smallholder agriculture and restore the substantive citizenship of the farming population.