Conclusions

ConclusionsThis study has clarified various non-price factors that influence the production incentives of small-scale cocoa producers in southern Ghana.It has also sought to contribute to an understanding of historical changes in cocoa-producing villages.Analytical focus has been on three points: the pattern of resource access and resource use of farmers, indigenous institutions influencing production incentives, and the power relationships involved in smallholder production.By adopting analytical methodology which starts with the individual farmers (not the household or any other social groups), the study has sought to reveal the economic stratification and unequal power relations among farmers.As stated in Chapter 1, the study has two objectives.First is to identify the broad incentive structures embedded in local institutions.In other words, the study has reconsidered the role of price incentives, which has been greatly emphasized in recent literature, by placing it in wider incentive structures that are interrelated with social and institutional aspects of agricultural production.Second is to describe some aspects of rural transformation in Ghana by comparing the situation of cocoa-producing villages in the 1990s with that described in earlier studies.These two points will be summarized in this concluding chapter. Aspects of Incentive Structures in Cocoa ProductionHigher real producer prices of cocoa enhance farmer incentives to produc-