For several decades, Ghana’s economy has been bolstered by its agricultural produce such as cocoa. Yet, cocoa farming communities continue to live in deplorable conditions. These poor conditions are driving the emigration of many inhabitants of rural areas into urban centers, a pattern that has negative effects on both rural and urban areas. The impact of this migration on urban centers is well-appreciated: densely populated areas with poor sanitation, increase in pressure on communal resources among others. However, its various effects on rural areas, aside the obvious loss of manpower, can be difficult to delineate. We highlight the plights of a cocoa farming community in a remote corner of the Eastern region of Ghana, to address how much agony cocoa communities still go through.

On the north-eastern corner of the Eastern region of Ghana, about 53 km from the regional capital, Koforidua, lay Kplandey, a small farming community. The road from Koforidua to Kplandey is mostly tarred, except for about 2 km stretch from Agyeikrom township to the village, which remains untarred. On wet days, it’s hard for cars to use this stretch so only motor bikes and tricycles access the road. Like many other places in the Eastern region, Kplandey is sandwiched between hills, and according to the community’s history, their forefathers descended from a nearby hill, traveling all the way from the south, somewhere in Somanya. The people of Kplandey are Krobo people, but the land they occupy is an Akyemland; the surrounding villages consist largely of Akyem people. Although Kplandey is perhaps the smallest village in the area, there is a stable supply of electricity, and very good internet connectivity. Once you make your way to the village in the afternoon, you will find that most households are quiet, with everyone busy working on their farms, which in most cases are a mile or two walk away from the village itself. The yield of their crop depends solely on the weather conditions, with rainfall serving as their main source of irrigation. At the center of the village, there is a borehole that provides potable water to the about 500 inhabitants for their daily domestic activities. When you move further, you will find a clinic, staffed with one doctor and a nurse who cater for the health needs of the community around the clock. 

The seemingly ease of life created by the supply of potable water, constant electricity and internet, as well as accessible roads, perhaps make Kplandey a modern rural area. Still, this is faux modernization, a residue of the neoliberal order that feeds into  the leisure class’ machinery of domination (and control), and thereby hide more pernicious conditions facing rural, farming communities, especially those engaged in smallholding farming, as is the case for most villages in Ghana. To be sure, these infrastructures are largely products of austerity measures that accompany foreign loans and aids. For instance, despite the efforts to provide amenities considered ‘modern’ to villages, there has been a blatant neglect of the educational needs of these villages. Education, as has been shown across time and space, is a potent driver of social, economic and political mobility of any people. If the ultimate goal of these modern amenities is mobility of any shape or form, education will be a prime area of investment. Instead, the goal of these interventions are mainly proximate, so the amenities that have been installed are those that sustain the villages in the now, in order for them to play their key role as the provider of raw materials that are extracted to feed the chain of production. 

Until recently, the school building for Kplandey was in a deplorable state. It consisted of a structure made of corrugated iron sheets that partially covered a wooden skeleton that any strong wind could easily blow away. It took philanthropy to build a new, more comfortable building for basic school education for the children of Kplandey. Education is now becoming the foundation to what Elizabeth Currid-Halkett has termed inconspicuous consumption. By restraining the access to knowledge, either by pricing out education (exemplified by current landscape of tertiary education) or inadequate investment (as in basic education), the aspirational class, as Currid-Halkett prefers to call the new elite engaged in inconspicuous consumption, have moved to cement their status. No wonder that there is a deficit in investment in education in rural areas, as well as an astronomical increase in the cost of tertiary education in Ghana (The current fees for a program like Medical laboratory Technology at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in 2023/2024 academic year is GhC 3135, more than 300% increase from a decade ago).    

Another intangible that features in the aspirational class’  display of their wealth is health. Research in medicine and biomedical science has, over the decades, tremendously increased the quality of health. The price of this quality health however is continually becoming exorbitant such that only the aspirational class, armed with their pecuniary waste, are able to afford it. Besides, health related research has focused on disorders that benefit the aspirational class, neglecting those of rural areas. For several years, Kplandey has been havocked with small insects that, aside the discomfort they bring, could also carry certain diseases. The insect (pictured) is nocturnal, and likely originates from the banana and plantain plants that are grown in addition to the cocoa. The people of Kplandey drive off these insects by wearing long dresses, which can be uncomfortable in the hot weather, or by lighting up fires so that the smoke drives them away. Nobody knows what infections these insects carry, but the discomfort that they bring is enough to merit some intervention. Yet, for decades, this has been neglected. According to Simon Boateng, a 41 year old farmer who grew up in the village, they consider the insect a part of their life. It’s quite perplexing that despite modernity’s boast of easing life in rural areas, a disturbing discomfort as this will continue to linger, when a well-orchestrated fumigation could ameliorate the irritation induced by these insects. 

When I talked with Simon during a WhatsApp call,  the picture he painted suggested that, aside from the health risk posed by these insects, they also affect the productivity of the village. By the time his household, which consists of his wife and his one child, mother, and five other siblings, drives away the insects in the morning, it will be almost 10am, by which time they set off to the farm. They have to return before the sun sets because the insects become active again at dusk. This definitely leads to a reduction in the time they would like to spend on their farm, leading to a decrease in productivity. Simon has a cocoa farm, from which he is only able to squeeze four bags of cocoa seeds annually. Of these four bags, the money generated from half of the bags are used to pay for laborers, fertilizers and insecticide. The rest goes into supporting his household. There is no surplus to save. This makes farming unattractive, for Simon’s household, the people of Kplandey, and this is likely the sentiment of many farming villages across Ghana. 

To be sure, Simon tells me that, for about a decade now, his household has lost interest in farming altogether. For his mother, who also comes from Kplandey, and generations before her, farming was their bread and butter. Now, they are pushing their household to learn new trades in the cities. His younger brother is now learning to become an electrician in Anyinam, and he will not come back to the village; many more of the younger generation will follow a similar path. There is a mass exodus from rural areas to the cities that has been occurring since at least the last three decades. This migration is a result of seeping through of traits characteristic of the leisure/aspirational class throughout the fabric of society. 

In Leisure Class, Veblen took a selective adaptationist turn to predict how over time, social evolution becomes dominated by the leisure class’ temperament and habits. These are habits that advance the sub, rather the whole in all situations it is applied. Since these traits become societal canons upon which individuals have to get adapted to, the migration from rural areas is a case of adaptation to the very traits that made the leisure class. What this means is that, there will continue to be a surge in rural-urban migration, leaving less manpower for farming activities. For a country where mechanization has been well-adopted, the manpower is replaced my machines. However, in cases where mechanization of agriculture is still limited, this poses a huge threat to food security at the local and global level, since farmers will only trade their produce when they have enough for subsistence. 

What then is to be done? It will be pompous to try to adequately sugggest solutions because solving this impending threat to food security needs critical research beyond this article. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to suggest that a key first step will be to reassess the kind of support that is being provided to rural areas. Granted, amenities such as potable water, electricity are necessary but education, which can have many ultimate repercussions is paramount. 

Contributors for this article: Samuel Owusu Boakye and Simon Boateng

The author, Alexander Kwakye is a geneticist interested in advancing agriculture using new technologies.