changing policies, shifting livelihoods: the fate of agriculture in guinea-bissau

Changing Policies, Shifting Livelihoods:The Fate of Agriculture in Guinea-Bissau

MARINA PADRÃO TEMUDO AND MANUEL BIVAR ABRANTES

How do African agricultural livelihoods change under stressful conditions? How do marketand agricultural policies and development interventions impact on both agricultural andsocial change, and consequently on food self-sufficiency? Which long-term factors cancontribute to ‘depeasantization’? Is the ‘New Green Revolution’ the best and only solutionfor African food insecurity?These are the main questions this paper sets out to address, usingsouthern Guinea-Bissau as a case study. On the basis of long-term ethnographic fieldwork,we look at farmers’ responses to external and internal pressures, and analyse how ‘depeas-antization’ progresses and livelihoods have been losing their resilience. Chances to reversethis trend, although difficult to implement, may still be feasible.

Keywords: West Africa, depeasantization, policies, war, food self-sufficiency, cashcrops

AFRICA’S DOWNWARD SPIRAL IN AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION ANDFOOD SECURITY

At present, one-third of the world’s poorest people live in Africa (World Bank 2007, xiii).Whilemost of the population depends on agriculturally based livelihoods, food insecurity andperiodic famines are also characteristics of the region. In order to understand this apparentparadox, we must take an historical and holistic point of view, incorporating political, eco-nomic, social and ecological analyses.

Although the Green Revolution resulted in major improvements in food production andproductivity in Asia and Latin America, it failed in Africa. This was mainly due to theinappropriateness of the technological package to the agro-ecological, socio-economic andcultural conditions of African smallholder agriculture.A new project called ‘Alliance for a GreenRevolution in Africa’ is being implemented, copying the initial model based on the substitutionof locally adapted varieties by modern ones and on the intensive use of agro-chemicals, butputting a new emphasis on developing the private sector’s inputs delivery system (RockefellerFoundation 2006).

Marina Padrão Temudo (corresponding author), research fellow at Tropical Research Institute (IICT), Apdo 3014,1301 Lisbon, Portugal. E-mail [email protected]. Manuel Bivar Abrantes, Institute of Social Sciences(ICS), Lisbon, Portugal.

This research was conducted within the framework of the project ‘Assessment of CO2 removal capacity andquantification of carbon stocks in the forests of Guinea-Bissau’, funded by the governments of Guinea-Bissau andPortugal. Fieldwork was also supported in part by grants from the Luso-American and the Portugal–AfricaFoundations, and in 2011 and 2012 by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), within theframework of the project PTDC/AFR/111546/2009. Insightful comments have been made by Paul Richards,Deborah Bryceson, Rosemary Galli, Eric Gable, Diana Mincyte, Tim Finan, Michael Degani, Ramon Sarró,Alexandre Abreu,Albert Roca, Harry West, and the Journal referees and associate editor.The first author also thanksthe Department of Anthropology of Yale University, where she was a Visiting Fellow (2010–11) while writing upthis paper, and the Technology and Agrarian Development Group of Wageningen University, for the feedbackprovided when she was invited as a Visiting Fellow in April 2010.

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Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 13 No. 4, October 2013, pp. 571–589.

© 2012 John Wiley & Sons Ltd doi: 10.1111/j.1471-0366.2012.00364.x

The livelihood implications of adopting a new Green Revolution for Africa are stillunknown, as new technologies are under corporate control (and then may weaken foodsovereignty) and can have negative impacts in terms of poverty reduction, farmers’ resilience toshocks and environmental conservation. Arguing in favour of an endogenous, bottom-up foodsecurity revolution, Paul Richards asserts that ‘there are systemic alternatives to a top-downGreen Revolution’ in Africa (2010, 7, 19). In a world of increasing demographic and environ-mental pressures, there is a growing support for alternatives to industrial agriculture (Gasteyer2008), and movements have emerged worldwide to support alternative methods of production,distribution and consumption (DeLind 2010; Lotti 2010). The conditions underlying ruralyouth orientation to non-agricultural work and out-migration are also ignored in the imple-mentation design of the New Green Revolution for Africa, as if the mere introduction of‘modern’ inputs and better distribution circuits could solve the African food crisis.

In recent decades, African agricultural production has stagnated or even declined in somecountries, and the rising world food prices between 2000 and 2008 spurred on hunger and civilunrest (e.g. Bush 2010; Moseley et al. 2010), unveiling the consequences of ‘imperial foodregimes’ (van der Ploeg 2010). Bryceson (2002a, 726, 727) argues that neoliberal developmentmodels in the 1980s and 1990s generated ‘deagrarianization’ and ‘depeasantization’.These wereprocesses of ‘occupational adjustment, income-earning reorientation, social identification andspatial relocation of rural dwellers away from strictly agricultural-based modes of livelihood. . . in which peasantries lose their economic capacity and social coherence, and shrink indemographic size relative to non-peasant populations’ (ibid.).1 Discussing the impact of neolib-eral reforms in several West African countries, Moseley et al. (2010) state that although, intheory, these policies aimed to increase food production, their outcome was an increase incereal imports. However, as Carlos Oya so cautiously noted, ‘there is only patchy micro-levelevidence on the uneven and unintended consequences of agricultural liberalization’ (2007,275). The effects of poor governance and wars – in part fuelled by economic and politicalliberalization (e.g. Richards 1996; Bryceson 2001, 58) – have been to further reduce agriculturalproduction and food security.

Concurrent with – and sometimes preceding – structural adjustment measures, some colo-nial and post-colonial policies induced migration and disinvestment in agricultural production.Africa has also undergone climatic instability since the end of the 1960s – frequent droughts,irregular distribution of rainfall and the shortening of the rainy season – which has alsocontributed to ‘depeasantization’ (e.g. Davidson 2009) and because of its weak adaptive capacity,it is considered to be a continent where the poor are particularly vulnerable to current climatechange (e.g. Boko et al. 2007). In addition, traditional African export crops were subjected touneven terms of trade and declining demand, reducing the chances of meeting food consump-tion needs through imports.

When we analyse processes of ‘depeasantization’ in the African context, structural factorsmust also be taken into account. Chauveau and Richards’ (2008) seminal article stressed theneed to study the evolution of lineage societies in colonial and post-colonial times, particularlyin relation to intergenerational tensions that may lie beneath youths’ motivations for insurgency.Elders’ exploitation of youth labour in patriarchal societies may in part be driving the‘depeasantization’ process of younger generations.

1 Deagrarianization/depeasantization theses have been criticized for the non-acknowledgement of their roots informer Marxist discussions around processes of class differentiation and capitalist penetration in the countryside(Mueller 2011).

572 Marina Padrão Temudo and Manuel Bivar Abrantes

© 2012 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Through an analysis of colonial and post-colonial extractive policies and mostly inadequatedevelopment interventions (the second and third sections) and a detailed empirical case study(the fourth section),2 this paper elucidates how ‘depeasantization’3 – which implies a decline inthe time spent working in agriculture, in the income earned from agriculture and in thehousehold coherence as a labour unit, and rural out-migration (Bryceson 2002a) – started inGuinea-Bissau prior to the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) measures of the Interna-tional Monetary Fund and was triggered by a complex array of factors, the impact of which wasintensified by neoliberal policies.Thus, this paper will contribute to the body of scholarship onagrarian change in sub-Saharan Africa in general, and to the debate on ‘deagrarianization’ and‘depeasantization’ processes in the continent of Africa in particular.

LATE COLONIALISM AND THE POLITICS OF SURPLUS EXTRACTION

In Guinea-Bissau, the colonial endeavour to create a plantation economy never succeeded(Mendy 1990, 38). The first land concessions were orientated towards the production ofgroundnuts; later ones combined groundnuts with sugar cane for the production of rum and,finally, others became specialized in the production of rice. The great majority of these landconcessions were, however, merely commercial centres and farmers living on the land enjoyedde facto ownership. Concessionaires supplied seeds and other merchandise on a credit basis,retaining the monopoly to buy surpluses and sell consumer goods (tobacco, rum and cloth).Farmers regularly fell into an endless cycle of indebtedness.

In 1945, the colonial government initiated several agricultural development actions, includ-ing experimentation with improved varieties, animal traction, diversification of food and exportcrops, and the creation of demonstration fields in each administrative subdivision (Galli andJones 1987, 35). However, insufficient government budgets prevented the full development ofagricultural services until Independence (Galli 1995, 65, 66).

The main export crop between 1846 and Independence was groundnuts. Large-scaleproduction was first introduced in the Quinara region (1840–90), but owing to inter-ethnicwars, sleeping sickness and the exhaustion of the soils in that region, the main production areawas eventually to be found in the north-eastern regions (Carreira 1962a, 61). In the 1960s,Carreira (1960, 272; 1962b, 279) noted a tendency to full market integration and economicdifferentiation in groundnut-producing areas.4 Farmers reduced millet and sorghum production

2 This paper draws on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork in the Tombali (38 months since 1993; by the firstauthor) and Quinara (in 2008, 2009 and 2012; a total of 11 months for the second author and 3 months for thefirst) regions of southern Guinea-Bissau, examining social change and the impact of market and agriculturalpolicies, wars and climatic instability on farmers’ livelihood strategies and food security status. The researchtechniques included direct and participant observation, informal conversations, focus group discussions, semi-structured interviews and transects. A country-wide rapid appraisal – to characterize farming systems andlivelihood strategies – was also conducted by the first author in about 250 villages located in all the administrativesubdivisions of Guinea-Bissau (during 9 months in 2008, 2009, 2011 and 2012). Unless otherwise stated, all datawere collected by the authors.3 The use of the concept of a ‘peasant’ in the context of Guinea-Bissau rural societies is difficult, sincesmallholders are not fully fledged peasants (see, e.g., Wolf 1985) but, more correctly, petty-commodity producerswho retain many of the characteristics of lineage societies. Because younger generations have developed a negativeperception of agriculturally based livelihoods, and have been increasingly engaging in trade and other non-agricultural activities, and in seasonal or permanent out-migration, we think that the use of Bryceson’s conceptof ‘depeasantization’ is fully justified.4 This tendency towards economic differentiation did not develop into class formation, most probably due to theeffects of the long anti-colonial war and early post-colonial policies. In a forthcoming paper, we intend to showhow present cashew nut production is giving rise to intense economic differentiation that may end up in actualtrends of class formation in some rural areas of the country.

The Fate of Agriculture in Guinea-Bissau 573


– the main staple foods in the eastern regions – and increased rice consumption, giving rise tofood insecurity, market distortions and a need for the state to control prices in order to preventprice inflation by local merchants (Carreira 1960, 272). Although the cultivation of groundnutswas almost exclusively orientated towards the metropolitan markets, small farmers did not useany improved seeds or fertilizers. Only in the 1960s did the colonial agricultural services startto conduct varietal selection and fertilization trials (Correia 1965, 71; Mendes 1969, 162).

Cotton has been produced in the territory of today’s Guinea-Bissau since pre-colonial times(George 1951, 501). However, colonial efforts to introduce high-yielding varieties and exportproduction failed. Palm kernels – almost exclusively collected from wild palm trees – have beencontinuously exported since the 1920s, and after the Second World War their internationalmarket price increased substantially (Mota 1954, vol. 2, 148). Conversely, palm oil productionfrom the pulp was low and mainly orientated towards the local market (JIU 1972, 36).

Rice exports to Europe started in the 1930s and continued through to the mid-1950s, whena combination of contraband, a sequence of dry years and, finally, the anti-colonial war reversedthis trend (Mota 1954, vol. 2, 151). Colonial price and seed credit policies aimed to incentivizefarmers’ production. However, smuggling to neighbouring Senegal and Guinea was commonwhen prices were higher in the French colonies, especially after the Second World War (Mota1954, vol. 2, 152). Research on indigenous rice production techniques was first carried out inthe late 1940s. Farmers’ knowledge and skills in mangrove swamp rice cultivation5 were praised,as were the high yields (2,500–3,500 kg ha–1) of local varieties and their nutritional content(Espírito Santo 1949). Field trials were first conducted in 1959, and 10 years later theproduction of local high-yielding varieties was recommended (Mendes 1969, 155, 355). Aparallel intervention was directed towards land reclamation projects (through the constructionof dykes and dams) to increase the production area of mangrove swamp rice (Santareno 1957;JIU 1972). However, most of these projects failed to attain their objectives, owing to land tenureproblems, a lack of social feasibility studies and/or the colonial policy of imposing submissivechiefs6 (Mota 1951, 672, 673; Kohnert 1988).

Although cashew trees had been introduced in the country long before, it was in the 1940sthat colonial authorities began to plant them systematically across the country (Areal 1954,745), in village orchards and along the main roads (as demonstration fields). Productionbelonged to villagers and the state stores guaranteed the purchase. In general, however, farmersdid not adopt this crop immediately, partly because the customary tree tenure system discour-aged people from taking care of village orchards. Eventually, production from state and privateplantations increased, and in 1970 revenues from cashew nut exports were the third highest inthe colony, behind groundnuts and palm kernels (JIU 1972, 36).

Colonial exploitation was largely based on the imposition of hut taxes – in order to forcefarmers to produce and sell export crops (groundnuts, rice and sesame) and to collect wildproducts such as palm kernels, rubber and honey – and of forced labour for the constructionof roads. The purchase of export crops was made by a network of small merchants andwarehouses of the main state-controlled import/export enterprise (CUF-Casa Gouveia) thatwere able to guarantee a share of their transactions through loans conceded to farmers duringthe hungry season (Carreira 1984, 95).The aim of the colonial state was to paralyse local small

5 For an understanding of the rice farming systems in Guinea-Bissau, see Temudo (2011).6 In brief, as a rule, rice paddies belong to whoever slashed the mangroves and constructed the dykes around eachplot. However, Manjak and Pepel traditional chiefs (régulos) have chieftaincy lands (bens de reinança) where theirsubjects must work for free. Among all Guinea-Bissau ethnic groups, the main agricultural tasks can only be doneafter the performance of certain rituals by the landlord (dono di tchon), and they could not be executed by animposed chief.



trade in order to increase the export of cash crops and the import of basic commodities throughstate-controlled enterprises (e.g. Galli and Jones 1987, 12, 37, 38). Agricultural produce wastransported mainly by boat, since the road infrastructure was poorly developed.

In 1963, the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and CapeVerde (PAIGC) startedan anti-colonial war. In most PAIGC-liberated areas, farmers were still able to produce surplusesto feed the liberation army and to buy consumer goods. Farmers who aligned with the colonialpowers, or who had been unable to integrate into the PAIGC-liberated regions, were forcedby the Portuguese military to regroup into strategic villages and farm plots that were rapidlyexhausted, sometimes making it necessary for the same farmers to turn to the colonialgovernment for food. According to PAIGC data, about 50 per cent of the population becameinternally displaced persons or refugees. Between 100,000 and 150,000 of them left the country(Galli 1987a, 90). As a result, the total production area was reduced from 411,000 ha in 1953to 125,000 ha in 1972 (Galli 1995, 72).

So far, we have described how colonial intervention practiced a particular form of labourrecruitment in land concessions and exploitation via unequal terms of trade.Yet it did not fullydisarticulate smallholders’ production systems, either through land grabbing or through favour-ing men’s out-migration. By refusing to grant independence, however, the colonial statetriggered a war of liberation, during which intense processes of ‘deagrarianization’ and ‘depeas-antization’ started. As we shall see in the following section, extraction policies continued in thepost-colonial state, increasing the ‘depeasantization’ process and promoting a shift towards cashcrop production.

INDEPENDENCE AND THE ENDURING EXTRACTION POLICIES

In 1974, after 11 years of war, Guinea-Bissau attained national sovereignty and the governmentadopted a centralized planned economy. Agriculture was relegated to supplying food for theurban population, raw materials for industry and export commodities. Assuming that farmerswould not respond to price incentives, the government set artificially low prices for agriculturalcommodities, and forced producers into direct exchanges of crops for other essential goodssupplied by state enterprises (Armazéns do Povo and Socomin). Galli (1995, 73) states that colonialand post-colonial endeavours to get rid of petty traders had a direct impact on the decline ofcommerce.

According to Hochet (1979, 71), state stores were seldom provisioned with basic consumergoods (kerosene, tobacco leaves, rum, sugar and cloth).The supply of agricultural tools and ofraw materials (mainly iron for the local production of tools) was also not secured (Hochet 1979,66). Frequently, lack of transport or fuel prevented the shipping of the products bought tofarmers by the state stores (Hochet 1979, 71). It was also common for state stores to remainclosed for several months owing to inefficient or corrupt management (Hochet 198, 1 32). Galli(1991, 56–7) mentions a decrease in farmers’ surplus production and sales to state stores, dueto the state’s inability to improve production conditions in terms of roads, transports, marketing,credit and extension services.

Groundnuts, palm kernels and cashew nuts were labelled as ‘traditional products’ and theirexport became a monopoly of the state (Tecninvest 1986, 221). Palm oil was not consideredan export product, but it acquired significant economic importance for farmers. Clandestineexport was conducted by itinerant traders (djilas) to Senegal (Tecninvest 1986, 324). Senegalesedjilas were also responsible for the purchase of fruit production (Hochet 1981, 11). However,the djilas were not a reliable marketing outlet; not only did they pay very low prices, but theyrarely travelled into rural areas because of the poor state of the roads (Hochet 1979, 63).



Government rhetoric after Independence attributed priority status to agricultural develop-ment. Rice consumption needs should be met through the selection and diffusion of modernvarieties, the use of external inputs and the rehabilitation of the mangrove swamp riceinfrastructure destroyed during the war. However, research conducted in state experimentalstations on rice, groundnuts, millet and sorghum yielded poor results. Most varieties presentlyproduced had been introduced from Senegal and Guinea by Guinea-Bissau farmers (seeTemudo 2011). Furthermore, fruit varieties and species selected by the state research station hadnever been released to farmers.

During the anti-colonial war, the infrastructure of the mangrove rice fields was severelydamaged, both by the bombs and by the lack of maintenance. However, as Galli and Jones(1987, 111) stated, ‘postwar efforts to restore rice production fell mainly on farmers who hadno accumulated savings’. The Department of Hydraulics and Soils (DHAS) and some ruraldevelopment projects implemented externally funded land reclamation projects using machin-ery (Kohnert 1988; Gomes 1996). Kohnert states that, by 1988, only 40 per cent of the arearehabilitated since 1975 was being used. In an evaluation of these projects, the author comparesthe methods employed to the colonial ones (namely the use of forced labour), criticizing thelack or the inadequacy of social feasibility studies and the absence of farmers’ participation(Kohnert 1988). Furthermore, the impact of price and market policies on rice production wasparticularly dramatic. Until economic liberalization in 1986, the state had a monopoly on therice trade. Between 1978 and 1984, the price was frozen and farmers were forced to sell to thestate stores (Ribeiro 1989, 45,46), with liberalization of prices only occurring in 1989 (Dias1990, 9).

By the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, the introduction of soya and otheroil seeds in the USA and the European Community had a direct negative impact on Guinea-Bissau groundnut and palm kernel exports (Dias 1992, 20). Ever since those days, cashew nutproduction has been increasingly important (Figures 1–3). In 1991, the value of the cashew nutexports amounted to 70 per cent of export revenues (Ribeiro and Miranda 1992, 14) and by2007 the country had become the world’s eighth largest producer, and the one with the biggestper capita production (FAOstat 2010).

Figure 1 Groundnut exports, 1910–2007 (in tons)

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Sources: Agência Geral do Ultramar (1972, 61), Dias (1992, 25), FAOstat (2010), Presidência do Conselho(1968, 16), Província da Guiné (1964, 7) Sá (1929, 50) and Sá (1948, 436).



During the first 15 years of independence, development interventions in rural communitieswere conducted primarily through state- or donor-sponsored integrated projects, which wereheavily funded by international aid. On the whole, such projects failed to solve the problemsfaced by rural producers,7 and investments in the agricultural sector never surpassed 10 per centof the total spending (Galli and Jones 1987, 133–60).

7 In the farmers’ perspective, the main development constraints felt up to the present time include poor road andtransport facilities, both for commercialization of agricultural products and the purchase of inputs, the lack orscarcity of credit for labour-hiring in the reconstruction of dykes and the establishment of orchards, the scarcityof support for the construction of wells, and the lack of support in the fight against crop pests and diseases.Recently, education and health services are also perceived as important needs that are not adequately provided bythe state.

Figure 2 Palm kernel exports, 1910–2007 (in tons)

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Sources: Agência Geral do Ultramar (1972, 61), FAOstat (2010), Presidência do Conselho (1968, 16),Província da Guiné (1964, 7), Sá (1929, 50) and Sá (1948, 436).

Figure 3 Cashew nut exports, 1961–2009 (in tons)

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Sources: FAOstat (2010) and MCITA (2009, 8).



As a result of government policies, agricultural production stagnated – the area decreased inrelation to pre-war times (Galli 1991, 55) – farmers became poorer and informal trade andmigration increased (see Galli and Jones 1987). In short, the processes of ‘deagrarianization’ and‘depeasantization’ that started during the war of liberation continued during these first years ofindependence. Facing a growing external debt, in the early 1980s the government was forcedto adopt structural adjustment measures.Among other reforms, development policies were to bereorientated in order to give priority to the agricultural sector, and the market was to beliberalized. However, Galli (1991, 58) states that the liberalization stimulated ‘non-productiverather than productive investments’ and that the main beneficiaries had been the ruling groupand its clientele, to which credit facilities had been made available for agriculture and trade bythe World Bank.The availability of credit for the ‘modern’ agricultural sector generated a boomin land concessions and many land tenure conflicts (Tanner 1991). Furthermore, several studieshave reported that land concessionaries lacked the will and the knowledge to develop agri-cultural activities in a more productive way than small farmers, and that the great majority ofthe area was not under cultivation (Galli 1991, 63–6).

The liberalization of the economy resulted in the immediate rise of rice and cashew nutproduction (Sanha 1988, 40). However, government politics addressed at forcing directexchange with farmers of rice for cashew nuts resulted in the rise of cheap rice imports (Dias1990, 10); this created unfair competition with local rice, whose surpluses were not shippedfrom the southern producing region of Tombali owing to inefficient circuits of commercial-ization (Fonseca 1990, 15, 16; Imbali 1992, 21). Moreover, rice imports became a very profitableactivity, controlled by an elite group.8 The way in which rice imports have been increasing sinceIndependence is shown in Figure 4.The amounts have been declining since 2002, possibly dueto the decreasing importance of the exchange of rice with cashew nuts and the recent ricerising prices in the international market.

8 See an interview by the Minister of Agriculture, engineer Alamara Nhassé, with a national newspaper (Diáriode Bissau no. 377, 19 July 2001).

Figure 4 Rice imports, 1933–2007 (in tons)

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Sources: FAOstat (2010), Presidência do Conselho (1968, 18), Província da Guiné (1964, 7) and Ribas(1950, 326, 328).



From the beginning of the 1990s, economic and political liberalization policies favouredthe creation of local non-governmental organizations (NGOs), many leaders of which hadpreviously been government officials. Since then, efforts to improve food security have mainlycontinued previous state actions. On the whole, post-Independence interventions, much ascolonial ones, have not changed the production techniques of either subsistence or cash crops,and innovation has been mostly an endogenous process.

During the 1998–9 civil war, most of the urban population (about 250,000 people) foundrefuge in the countryside, where people were given food and shelter. According to Tin (2002),humanitarian aid was insufficient and hardly effective; seed distribution after the war alsoyielded unsuccessful results, given the lack of knowledge regarding farmers’ preferences, itsdelayed distribution and the fact that no information was given on the characteristics of thereleased varieties.After the war, farmers’ faith in the will of the state to develop the countrysidediminished even further,9 while youth migration, absenteeism and school enrolment added tothe problems faced by rural agriculture. Given this scenario, the increase in cashew nutproduction (due to its low labour demands) and the reliance on the buying of imported ricewith its revenues emerged as the best solution for farmers. For many households, food securityhas become dependent on the market; and early adopters of cashew trees, who possess largeorchards, have completely stopped the production of cereals.

In sum, contrary to what happened in other African countries (Bryceson 2002b;Moseley et al.2010), in Guinea-Bissau the period prior to SAP was not characterized by an increase inagricultural production promoted by a state policy of subsidized inputs, credit and infrastructuredevelopment. State investments were mainly concentrated in the capital, and the rural–urbanterms of trade favoured youth migration and farmers’ disinvestment in surplus production.Themassive adoption by Guinea-Bissau smallholders of cashew nut production for the export marketis also dissimilar to post-SAP strategies adopted in other countries, where farmers decreased theproduction of both food and cash crops (Bryceson 2010). The SAP period in Guinea-Bissaucoincided with the expansion of the world market for cashew nuts and with concomitant priceincreases (see Barry et al. 2007), contrary to the observed decline in the world and producerprices of many traditional cash crops in the 1980s and 1990s (Oya 2007, 281).

Through the presentation of a case study and the adoption of a historical perspective, in thenext section I will show how food security became compromised by the orientation towardsland-extensive cash crop fruit production and trade activities; an aggregate result of bothexternal (mainly post-colonial policies) and internal factors (which became relevant during thewar of liberation) that contributed to the ‘depeasantization’ of the younger generation and anincreased fragmentation of the households.

‘IN THE OLD DAYS WE WORKED FOR THE BELLY, NOWADAYS WE ONLYWORK FOR THE POCKET’: CHANGING LIVELIHOODS IN THE QUINARAAND TOMBALI REGIONS

The regions under study (Figure 5) have an area of about 6,875 km2 – and around 19 per centof the country population – and host a complex inter-ethnic mix (Nalu, Beafada, Balanta,Fulbe, Manjako, Mandinka and Susu, among others) with complementary and competing waysof using natural resources. Harbouring two national parks (Cantanhez in Tombali and Cufada

9 The constant political unrest as a result of factional fights over the control of the state apparatus and of foreignaid, the growing interference of the military in political affairs, the impunity of numerous and brutal killings ofpoliticians and military, and the mounting gap between the living conditions of the urban elite and the ruralpopulation all concur with the perception that ‘the state only exists to exploit us’, as phrased by many interviewees.



in Quinara), they also constitute a privileged setting for the study of the food–environmentnexus. The Nalu and the Beafada are the landlords in Tombali and Quinara, respectively.However, the Balanta became the major ethnic group in these southern regions soon after thebeginning of their migration in search of mangrove rice fields, less than a hundred years ago.

Before Balanta migration, both the Nalu and the Beafada suffered from constant hungryperiods. The Nalu farmed rice in the inland valleys, but their diet was mainly constituted byfish, palm oil, palm sprouts and mangrove fruits. The Beafada had been fully involved inpre-colonial trade networks and farmed millets, sorghum, rice and groundnuts, but theydepended on wild fruits, leaves and roots in seasonal hungry periods. After Balanta migrationto the south – and their transformation of Tombali and Quinara into surplus rice-producingareas – the Nalu and the Beafada adopted mangrove swamp rice cultivation.

Rice became the staple crop, and the production systems follow an ethnic matrix. In asimplified way, they can be described as follows: the Balanta specialize in mangrove swamp rice,

Figure 5 A map of the regions under study

Bissau

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while the Fulbe produce upland intercropped rice. The other ethnic groups can be placedbetween these two extremes, given the fact that households use one or both of theseproduction systems in varying proportions. Beafada women also produce inland freshwaterswamp rice. In years of foreseen hunger, lowlands and inland valleys can also be used by menof other ethnic groups for the production of rice during the rainy season and sweet potatoesand cassava during the dry season.

Compared to Tombali, the mangroves in Quinara occupied a significantly reduced area.The forest cover was concentrated in the present-day Buba administrative subdivision (wherethe Cufada park is located) and along river margins, and a savannah woodland landscape wasdominant. For this reason, but also because of its earliest introduction, groundnuts, rather thanrice, were the main cash crop produced particularly by Beafada and migrant Manjako andMancanha, but also by the Balanta.

Besides becoming the country’s ‘rice granary’, Tombali was also a centre of kola nuts andcitrus production by non-Balanta groups. In Quinara, with the exception of the presentEmpada administrative subdivision, fruit production was mainly for home consumption. None-theless, before the anti-colonial war, some Beafada were able to enrich themselves by plantingcashew orchards and by exchanging cashew wine for rice or work with the non-MuslimBalanta.10

When the war of liberation began, both Quinara and Tombali soon became the centres ofPAIGC-controlled areas. While most of the Balanta were able to continue mangrove riceproduction and the rebuilding of dykes, at the harsh cost of living in the mangroves, themajority of the population belonging to the other ethnic groups abandoned their paddies andeither concentrated in upland and inland valleys cultivation or migrated. Groundnut cultivationwas drastically reduced.

At the end of the war, the price policy, the reduced amount of credit for dyke reconstruc-tion, the difficult marketing conditions and the farmers’ own diminished labour mobilizationcapacity constituted disincentives to fully rehabilitate the pre-war mangrove swamp productionareas. The mangrove swamp ecology is highly productive even without the use of chemicalfertilizers and modern varieties, but it is quite work-intensive throughout the whole year. Incontrast, upland cultivation is only work-intensive for slashing (which can, in any case, be doneslowly and with interruptions during the dry season) and weeding. Upland cultivation alsoprovides farmers with a large array of crops and a staggered harvest that allows for a betterdistribution of the available labour force, and for a diversified diet and income sources.

Contrary to Balanta, most farmers from other ethnic groups that had been pre-war man-grove swamp rice producers became unable to rehabilitate them, and reorientated theirproduction system to upland cultivation and fruit production.The majority of the householdspracticing only this system became unable to meet their consumption needs for rice by meansof their own production. The rice shortage was mitigated by the purchase of (or barteringcashew for) imported rice and by a complex system of inter-ethnic exchange mechanisms,which included an exchange of work and other products (mainly groundnuts and traditionalsoap) for rice, and a system of loans based on strong social networks.

Until the mid-1980s, the Balanta had been able, by their own means, to reconstruct themajority of the dykes, but a shortage of labour, or ‘lack of unity’ (a notion used by farmers torefer to the increased monetization and food and drink requirements of labour groups),prevented full rehabilitation of previous production areas. Only in the early 1990s – due to the

10 Carreira (1961, 120) confirms the occurrence of these exchanges in the early 1960s.



aggregate effect of higher rice prices and the return of demobilized veterans of the war ofliberation – were Balanta farmers able to accomplish dyke and dam repairs, in some cases evenincreasing the production areas.

In Tombali, the flagship state intervention for reconstruction of mangrove swamp fields hasbeen the externally funded Como-Caiar project. In the opinion of our interviewees, misman-agement and embezzlement of funds were high, and the project’s only accomplishment was notrehabilitation of dykes and dams but, rather, the construction of a road between the two islands.In Quinara, however, the state interventions had negative and irreversible consequences, in thatthey destroyed the productive basis of subsistence.According to farmers, the technicians refusedto listen to Balanta specialist advice.Within a few years, the dykes and dams were broken andthe rivers silted up, compromising the water management system.As a consequence, most of therice fields are now unproductive.

After Independence, fruit production, mainly of bananas, cola and citrus, was adopted bynon-Balanta farmers to meet their rice consumption needs and to buy basic consumer goods.Until the 1990s, the expansion of fruit production in Tombali was prevented by the lack ofmarketing opportunities; only Senegalese petty traders purchased the produce, and only on arather irregular basis. In Quinara, by contrast, the proximity of a juice and jam factory, set upafter Independence, and the fact that farmers are able to transport their produce to the marketby canoe have constituted an incentive towards fruit production since the mid-1980s.

Besides fruit production, another strategy introduced by upland farmers was groundnutfarming (following rice in the second year of cultivation) by women. This gender change ingroundnut cultivation became possible through the introduction, after Independence, of short-cycle varieties, which are much less work-intensive with regard to land preparation andharvesting than the long-cycle ones. The fallow period was also progressively shortened, notbecause of scarcity of land, but because of youths’ refusal to slash well-developed forests. Morerecently (since 2000), Senegalese traders have come into some rural areas in search of ground-nuts, dried cassava and sweet potatoes.The good prices offered are orientating farmers towardsincreasing their production areas, particularly of cassava. In the Cacine administrative sector ofTombali, whose border with the Republic of Guinea (where rice prices are very high) offersprofitable opportunities for smuggling, mangrove and upland surplus rice production startedsome years ago. In this way, subsistence crops have become non-traditional commodities formarkets in neighbouring countries.

The diffusion of cashew nuts was a rather complex process, whose time and rate dependedupon numerous factors, such as the availability of savannah environments, the previous dis-semination of the crop, the influence of external agents, market opportunities and the religiousattitudes of Muslim farmers, such as the Beafada, the Nalu, the Fulbe and so on. In Quinara,as stated before, some Beafada farmers had, since colonial times, cultivated these trees in orderto exchange the juice of the cashew apple for rice with the Balanta (who let it ferment in orderto produce an alcoholic beverage). This strategy was reactivated after Independence. Otherfactors driving early adoption and the rapid spread of production areas were the distribution ofseeds to villagers by a local state governor in 1975, the proximity of the Bolama juice and jamfactory, and the fact that an NGO distributed plants to farmers and a logging company usedcashew trees in its reforestation plan.

The savannah woodlands, where groundnuts had been produced since colonial times, wereprogressively converted into cashew nut orchards.At first, the Balanta only concentrated on ricefarming and accessed the cashew ‘wine’ either by exchanging rice for the juice or by engagingin the harvest for payment in cashew apples. However, the decrease in rice production, due tothe above-mentioned factors, drove them to create their own orchards, and now many depend



on the sale of cashew nuts and wine to meet their rice consumption needs.11 Moreover, theprocess of creating cashew orchards also has the advantage of allowing upland cultivation of riceand other food crops during the first 3–4 years of cultivation. In both Quinara and Tombali,Balanta investment in cashew tree cultivation has been hindered by their reduced access toupland plots.

In Tombali, the landscape features large tracts of dense forest, and the process has variedaccording to the environmental conditions and the religious attitudes of Muslim ethnic groups.There were several colonial orchards in the Cacine administrative sector, and when the priceof cashew nuts rose in the late 1980s, the inhabitants of many villages (particularly Balanta ones)located near savannahs started to plant the trees.The same was true for the Catió sector, but inboth sectors the process only increased after the civil war of 1998–9. In contrast, in theCubucaré sector (where the Cantanhez park is located), there are large tracts of forest, and inorder to plant cashew trees one needs to ‘kill the forest’ and devote a lot of labour to clearingthe bush yearly. Moreover, members of the Muslim groups refused to plant cashews becausemen feared that women would exchange the fermented juice with the Balanta for rice, thusbecoming sinners. Until the mid-1990s, only the Balanta planted small cashew orchards in thesavannahs surrounding their villages. At that time, land insecurity generated by the land lawreform process and by the creation of a park prompted even Muslim farmers to plant cashewsas a land marker. In the Quebo administrative sector, where the Muslim Fulbe are the dominantgroup, expansion of the crop began early in the 1980s and some farmers stopped farmingupland rice during the years of high cashew nut prices.

In the regions under study, the process of converting agricultural land into orchards wasaugmented after the civil war of 1998–9, paralleling the increasing division between thepolitical, economic and military elite and the rural population. Farmers consider the state to beexploitative and not interested in improving their lives.Their children are no longer interestedin agriculture and, as they often say, orchard work is now a form of ‘pension scheme’.

In order to understand the changes in the farming systems initiated as a result of the warsand post-Independence policies, we need to look closely at the way in which society isorganized and at the transformations that it has undergone. The basic unit of social andterritorial organization of all ethnic groups is the extended patrilineal, virilocal and polygamousdescent group, spanning one to three generations, which inhabits an area (moransa). Eachmoransa consists of one or more ‘households’ – regardless of the number of married men thatit includes – that is, a unit of organization of production, processing, consumption anddistribution (fogon). Household members play a part in collective activities that ensure theeconomic and social reproduction of both moransa and fogon, of the patrilineage and matrilin-eage, and of the village where they live; they may also carry out individual activities in pursuitof their own objectives.

Household work was performed by family labour and mutual-aid groups of two types: first,village groups organized by age and gender (madjuandades); and, second, small informal groupsof friends. The work of the madjuandades rotated among the households of each village, andtheir payment consisted of a good meal during the working day and a share of the harvest, withwhich the group organized a party. Traditionally, the individual consumption needs of thehousehold members were minimal, and their cash requirements were very low.This allowed theconcentration of human and financial resources for the collective social and economic repro-duction of the household.

11 At the end of the 1980s, Ribeiro (1988, 9, 10) and van der Drift (2002) started to observe this process in thevillages of Quinara.



During the war of liberation, deep social transformations occurred. Part of the populationmigrated and adopted new lifestyles. Those who stayed in Guinean territory became dividedbetween the two opposing armies. Regardless of which army they joined, young people wereequally empowered by their role as soldiers and by the introduction of new values and socialrules that destabilized the previous gerontocratic power base. Individualism, depreciation ofagricultural work, new consumption needs and an urban orientation emerged. Furthermore, inthe case of those who sided with colonial rule, the war prevented or reduced the productionprocess, and young people ceased to be socialized into agricultural work, losing many of theskills acquired by previous generations. The war, therefore, started processes of ‘deagrarianiza-tion’ and ‘depeasantization’.

After Independence – but especially after economic liberalization – the big moransas con-sisting of a single household started to lose cohesion, and their ability to mobilize labour andcreate income that could be used for collective productive investments. Household heads arenow obliged to use their prestige and their bargaining skills to mobilize, for collective aims, thelabour of the household members and their different individual incomes. School attendance –which was poor during colonial times, but has become increasingly common during the pastdecade – is also a factor that affects the labour mobilization capacity of heads of household,both directly and indirectly (as it strengthens the attitude of depreciation of agricultural work).Youth absenteeism is considered by elders to be as big a problem as migration.Young peoplerefuse to do what they call ‘hard work’ – considering themselves smarter than their elders – andfrequently claim to be ill in order to free themselves from their work obligations.

The village aid groups – which previously granted an import share of the households’agricultural work – became rather expensive. With the erosion of the authority of the eldersand the weakening of the norms of reciprocity, this form of solidarity is now practically extinct.In order to hire a village group, household heads must now be able to pay a huge amount ofmoney in advance (although small livestock is also accepted), and to provide an abundant andrich meal and other items (e.g. kola nuts, tobacco, juice with lots of sugar, green tea andexpensive alcoholic beverages).

This weakening of family labour and of mutual aid was reinforced by and, at the same timereinforced, the influence of the agricultural and market policies followed after Independence,and most non-Balanta households do not fulfil their rice consumption needs.The full accom-plishment of household food consumption needs is now dependent on rice purchases by theheads of household (using income from fruit production) and on women’s production,processing and marketing activities (through the direct exchange of several products withrice).12

Among the Balanta, the fragmentation of household labour and the rising costs of villagelabour groups reduced households’ capacity to produce large rice surpluses. The change inalcohol consumption patterns – once the preserve of the elders and limited to special occasions(e.g. van der Drift 2002) – favoured by the increased cultivation of cashews has been a keyfactor in reducing the well-known Balanta work capacity.The practice of commercial activitiesamong Balanta men, until quite recently banned for cultural reasons, has come to be accepted,especially after the civil war of 1998–9, which – as already mentioned – introduced profoundsocial transformations (Temudo 2009).Today, young men’s migration and engagement in tradeactivities is accepted, just as their education is supported.

Youth migration in the region under study cannot be justified either by denied access toland and wives or by the impossibility of finding income-generating activities in the rural areas.

12 Balanta women do not have any responsibility for household food security.



On the one hand, young people have been granted freedom to devote more time to individualcash-for-profit activities and the age of marriage has been increasingly reduced; on the otherhand, production of fruit and palm oil and commercial activities generate cash inflows that areextraordinarily high by local standards. However, the youth claim that there is no possibility forindividual accumulation under the local rules of solidarity and reciprocity. Indeed, when profitsare invested in the local commercialization of non-agricultural products – instead of being spentimmediately – the business concerned is quickly driven into bankruptcy by loans made to thefamily and neighbours that are not paid back. So, although increasing individualism, moneti-zation and market integration are taking place, there are still no clear signs of a tendencytowards class differentiation in the regions under study.

Declining amounts of rainfall, the shortened rainy season, the emerging irregularity in raindistribution (with more frequent and longer dry spells), and the recent higher tide levels –which destroyed the structure of the dykes in many mangrove swamp fields in Tombali – arefurther weakening farmers’ capacity to fulfil their food consumption needs, making them moredependent on the market and on upland rice production in order to face the hungry periodto come. The recent increase in crop pests and diseases (mostly affecting rice, bananas andoranges, and probably also associated with climate change) is also contributing to a collapse oflocal food security. Between 2007 and 2009, food shortages have been amplified by the rise inimported rice prices and the deeper fall in the farm-gate price of cashew nuts.

In order to address these problems, farmers from all ethnic groups are diversifying theirfarming systems, not only by increasing the importance of certain crops for the market, such ascassava, orange and lima beans, but also by increasing both upland and mangrove swamp ricecultivation again. Several local ‘food first’ strategies – what Bryceson (2002b, 11) would call a‘subsistence fallback response’ – have been adopted: the slashing-and-burning of old casheworchards to produce upland rice and other crops (in orchards closed to villages, especially whencashew trees have occupied all the available agricultural land); the offering, borrowing or saleby non-Balanta to Balanta farmers of abandoned mangrove swamp parcels, especially those nearthe main river margins, where dyke repair and maintenance is vital and labour intensive; theinvestment of agricultural and non-agricultural incomes in the rehabilitation of abandonedmangrove swamp rice fields and the reclamation of new areas; and the reduction of cashpayments and the food requirements of village labour groups.

EVERY CLOUD HAS ITS SILVER LINING: CONCLUDING REMARKS

Until recently, farmers in southern Guinea-Bissau had been able to access sufficient, safe,nutritious and culturally acceptable food, mainly through their own local production andexchange networks. However, this does not mean that they had been subsistence farmers‘uncaptured by the market’. On the contrary, as Galli (1987b, 94) so eloquently states, ‘over thecourse of 500 years, Guinean producers have responded eagerly to trading opportunities,introducing new crops, modifying their social structures and adapting to new forms of labourorganization’.The Quinara and Tombali case studies strengthen her argument, by showing theway in which farmers have been diversifying their activities, shifting from food to cash crops,from one cash crop to another, and from cash crops back to food production, all according tochanging policies, economic opportunities and social transformations.

The post-colonial failure to improve living conditions in rural areas, the low price ofagricultural products, the difficulties in marketing them due to poor infrastructural develop-ment, and the perception that development funds are being usurped by the urban elite and byproject staff have all contributed to reinforcing young people’s prejudice towards agricultural



work and the countryside. As a consequence of youth’s increasing individualism, and theirorientation to commercial activities and urban livelihoods, and of the rising monetization ofsocial relations, the ‘depeasantization’ process that started during the war of liberation hashardened; the labour mobilization capacity of the heads of household has reduced dramaticallyand their orientation towards fruit production (less demanding in terms of labour) has emergedas their best chance to attain food security. The high rice prices on the international marketsin 2007–8 did not benefit local farmers and even increased food insecurity, as they were unableto immediately respond to the new opportunity. The food scarcity did, however, highlightthe vulnerability of dependence on the market and revived farmers’ concerns about foodself-sufficiency.

The fact that Guinea-Bissau agriculture is still mainly organic and relies on farmers’ ownseeds creates the potential for the adoption of an agro-ecological approach to a food sovereigntypolicy. Countries such as Guinea-Bissau – where poor governance and political instabilityhold down development and land pressure is, in general, still low13 – do not need a GreenRevolution based on the technical-market fixes of neoliberalism. Moreover, the Guinea-Bissaucivil war demonstrated the stabilizing power of a cohesive and socially embedded food regime(Temudo 2008). In a carbon-constrained world, efforts should be made to support low externalinput agricultural methods and local food regimes, which would be much more in tune withthe country’s ecological, social, economic and turbulent political context.

There is a call for a radical policy transformation that may include regulated markets (toprotect local farmers from imports of cheap cereals, produced under farmer-friendly policies),the improvement of the road and transport networks, credit facilities, and the certification oforganic crops for international niche markets. As Bryceson (2002, 735) argues, ‘[a] food firstagricultural policy is advisable with respect to prevailing world market prices and internationalterms of trade’.

In Guinea-Bissau, ‘depeasantization’ has been taking place in recent years in parallel with anincrease of the agricultural area and of the contribution of agriculture to exports’ earnings(Barry et al. 2007; BCEAO 2009).Therefore, ‘deagrarianization’ – of which ‘depeasantization’ isa subset, according to Bryceson (e.g. 2002a) – is not a straightforward concept that can be easilyapplied to this specific case. According to Bryceson (2001, 54), neoliberal policies havepromoted ‘deagrarianization’ in Africa by drastically reducing the income that can be earnedfrom agriculture and by increasing household members’ need for cash, as many previous stateservices (e.g. free health and education) have been cut and the price of basic goods hasincreased. These conditions have driven the emergence of what Bryceson (2002b) calls ‘mul-tiplex livelihoods’ among agrarian populations, who have reduced the time spent in agricultureby orientating themselves to the performance of other activities. In the case of Guinea-Bissau,after SAP, farmers engaged in non-agricultural activities at the same time as they adopted newand more lucrative cash crops (mainly fruit), which, because they required lower labour inputs,allowed for the expansion of the agricultural area that had been largely reduced during the warand in the early post-Independence period.

13 The population density was still very low in 2007 (45 inhabitants per square kilometre for the whole country,with 26 inhabitants per square kilometre for Tombali and 22 inhabitants per square kilometre for Quínara)according to unpublished estimates of Guinea-Bissau INEC. There is, however, a scramble for land – observed,during the fieldwork trips of 2011 and 2012, (mainly but not only) along the main road that links Bissau capitalcity to the cities of Gabú (east) and Buba (south) cities – by the urban elite and foreign investors, which istriggering a parallel land race by rural inhabitants who are trying to expand their orchards and secure permanentrights to land.



Guinea-Bissau has experienced a long ‘depeasantization’ process of the countryside, recentlyamplified by youths’ increased enrolment in school.Yet, the quality of education is poor overalland is not providing the youth with new skills; migration is orientated towards urban areas whereyoung people are unable to find jobs for unskilled labour, while – according to our intervieweesacross the country – migration to Europe has become a fading mirage due to the increasingdifficulties and costs involved in getting a visa.To some degree, the recently observed reinvest-ment in food production parallels the return of some young men to agricultural work during therainy season and the re-adoption of less cash-expensive forms of labour mobilization.This ‘foodfirst’ move opens up a window of opportunity for innovative policies aiming at reversing, or atleast slowing down, the ‘depeasantization’ process in the Guinea-Bissau countryside.

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changing policies, shifting livelihoods: the fate of agriculture in guinea-bissau

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