Agrarian Contracts

Labor and land are the most important resources in cocoa production.Chapter 2 discusses the various agrarian contracts made by Ghanaian cocoa farmers to acquire labor and land.In Section I a number of labor arrangements and agrarian contracts in cocoa production are described.The aim here is twofold.First, it is to provide information on labor deployment strategies of and means of acquiring land by farmers, which helps in understanding the variety of agrarian contracts and institutions in Ghana.Second, it highlights the characteristics of contracts that are very different from those of share contracts described in the next section.Section II focuses on a detailed analysis of the share contracts that are used extensively in cocoa production.This analysis demonstrates that these share contracts have a social significance in that they take a variety of forms to suit the particular circumstances of both landlords and tenants and, at the same time, they can be adapted in line with changes in individual life cycles and socioeconomic conditions.The section also discusses why, in Ghanaian cocoa production, share contracts dominate and fixed-wage or fixed-rent contracts are rarely found. I. Labor Arrangements and Agrarian Contracts 1. Labor ArrangementsThe types of labor used in cocoa farming can be classified into four categories: family labor, hired labor, communal labor, and labor exchange groups