Mode of Production or Mode of Cultivation: Explaining the Failure of European Cocoa Planters in Competition with African Farmers in Colonial Ghana

Abstract

Early colonial Ghana² was the site of one of the most dramatic pioneer booms in the world history of cocoa cultivation. Ghana began to export cocoa in 1891 (Tudhope, 1909–10, 34); only twenty years later it became the world’s largest producer with a harvest of nearly 40 000 tons; and in 1923 the harvest was over 200 000 tons for the first time (Kay, 1972, 336). Given that the average gap between planting and first fruiting was about five years (Austin, 1984, 389–90) and that a tree’s yield did not peak until much later (Beckett, 1944, 71), it is clear that the capacity to yield over 200 000 tons a year had been planted before 1918. The growth of output slowed and stopped within the next decade and a half, primarily in lagged response to much lower real producer prices from 1917 onwards (Bateman, 1974, 286–303, 316–18). The 1936 total of 311 000 tons was a record and remained so until some years after Ghana’s independence from Britain in 1957 (Kay, 1972, 336–7). The last decade of colonial rule saw a partial revival of real producer prices. This stimulated an increased rate of planting, especially in the northwest of the forest zone, which increasingly offset a decline in productive capacity in the older cocoa areas which were suffering from ageing trees, deteriorating soil fertility and, especially, swollen shoot virus (Bateman, 1974, 286–307, 315–19, 323).

1. The paper represents reflections on materials collected in Ghana and Britain. My two longest periods of research in Ghana were financed by the UK Economic and Social Research Council and its predecessor: doctoral field-work from the University of Birmingham (1979–80) and postdoctoral fieldwork from the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London (1987). Shorter field trips were assisted by grants from Clare College, University of Cambridge (1977); the Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham (1982); the University of Ghana (1985); and the London School of Economics and University of London (1992). I am very grateful to all who commented upon earlier drafts, especially Robin Blackburn, William Clarence-Smith, Polly Hill, Emmanuel Gyimah-Boadi, Andrew Jones, Laurens van der Laan, Paul Nugent and Richard Rathbone. None of them are responsible for the defects that have survived into the chapter.