Imagine how food and cash crops were produced in the 1900s. Peasant farming held sway at the time across the country.
Documents concerning the evolution of farming over the years show steady increase in volume of cash and food crops. Food crop production was carried out in the Southern part of the country and the Northern Territories (NTs).
Beyond the mountain ranges of the south that is in the NTs, farming bore characteristics of the Oriental the reason being the influence of the people from across the Sahara somewhat.
Farmers here produced for the needs of their families and to enable them to purchase essentials like clothing. Production for export was hardly considered.
The area, being savannah grassland, farmers in the NTs produced food crops like starchy tubers, drought resistant oily seeds and others.
Surplus crops were sent to Kumasi and other parts of the South to satisfy the demands of the relatively wealthy persons.
Farmers contended with the lack of knowledge of tackling crop diseases, conservation of crops and modern techniques of farming and how to minimise post-harvest losses. Those were early days.
In the South, there was little pressure on the farmers to produce for survival as it was among their NT counterparts. Food crop production was more prevalent in the relatively dry portions of this part of the country. In areas like Ada and Keta where the meteorological conditions were similar to the NTs, production of poultry and food crops took place as they did around Kumasi, Koforidua and Sekondi and other coastal areas.
With gradual improvement in the investment in education by the colonial authorities and missionaries and purchasing power coming to the locals, commercial production of food crops and the export of their cash counterparts began.
Farmers in the South began producing for sale to a bigger market hence their increased purchasing power and an increased volume of output in response to a high demand.
Food and crop production faced the challenges of tillage, cultivation, drainage, shade, protection against wind, pruning, manurring and pest and disease control. Preparation of cocoa beans and palm oil was faced with technical challenges hence the then low production of the crops until much later; the Department of Agriculture then still trying to find its feet.
In the period under review, statistics of areas and their yields, prices and estimate of annual extension of cultivation and of future output was not systemized.
Violent fluctuations in local prices, panic rumours and unsatisfactory relationship between farmers and local buyers as frequent occurrences did not inure to the interest of production and interest of farmers.
Cocoa Industry:
In my agric science lessons, I enjoyed the botanical names of crops and still remember that cocoa is theobroma cacao.
As a crop associated with Ghana’s economic progress from the colonial era, it has an interesting history having been brought to the Gold Coast by Tetteh Quarshie from Bioko in Fernando Po, now Equitorial Guinea.
He is said to have brought the crop to the Gold Coast in 1876 having lived in Fernando Po for just six years.
Today he is not even captured in the history of that country, a former colony of Spain to which its exports such as cocoa in pre-independence times went. Cocoa exports from Fernando Po also went to Germany and the UK.
Gold Coast official documents, however, pointed out that cocoa was introduced into the Gold Coast in 1879. In 1891 the first export of 80lbs of cocoa beans from the Gold Coast was made. This paved way for subsequent and increasing volume of export of the crop to feed chocolate and cocoa drink factories in the UK and elsewhere.
Subsequent increase in areas of production saw the Gold Coast establishing its name in the marketing of the cash crop on the international market.
The world market price of cocoa was determined by the Gold Coast’s output of the crop. Those were the golden years of the Gold Coast’s production of the crop and the period when migrant workers trooped to the Gold Coast to work on the now burgeoning cocoa farms springing up across the producing areas.
Before the above period was reached, cocoa production hardly covered more than a couple of thousand acres.
The then Department of Agriculture conducted instructions to farmers or extensive services, agricultural shows and crop competitions as means of improving farms and output.
Plant pests inspection, examination and certification of cocoa at ports and compilation of accurate market statistics were also undertaken by the Department of Agriculture.
The old method of transporting cocoa circa 1920
Oil-Palm
The oil-palm industry even in the 1920s faced serious competition from Malaya and Sumatra. The attention on cocoa robbed it of its share of care from the colonial authorities. The existing method of managing it at the time was not good enough and so it could not compete on the international market. The Department of Agriculture imported the seed of the Sumatra-Deli type for trial here.
Shea-butter nut
Shea-butter nuts are indigenous to the NTs where they grow wildly. It is the source of fat for cooking and cosmetic products abroad and so was in high demand even in the colonial days abroad.
In the 1900s between 700 and 800 tons of the crop were collected from the wild and largely exported to Ashanti and the Coastal areas.
Estimate of trees in the wild in the 1900 was put at around 192 million with ten trees per acre – the credibility of which figure is difficult to authenticate.
The Department of Agriculture established that in the 1900s the maximum quantity people could collect from the wild was 53,646 tons. The price in London in 1927 ranged from twelve pounds five shillings to thirteen pounds five shillings. It was difficult to plant, its growth rather slow. A trial of the plant was undertaken in the 1900s in Yendi but the results were not encouraging and so the wild source of the crop remains the means of obtaining shea-butter nuts.
There were other cash crops like sisal, coffee, cotton and rice although they could not stand the status of cocoa.
The foregone was composed from documents about the subject dated around 1928.
By A. R. Gomda
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