Peasant Women and Economic

Transformation in The Gambia

Judith A. Carney

ABSTRACT

Contemporary agricultural development strategies in The Gambia are centred

o n irrigated rice and vegetables - crops traditionally cultivated by women.
Irrigated agriculture, however, is opening up new avenues to capital accumu-
lation at the national, regional and household levels. This article examines the
contradictions for women of donor-funded schemes that combine gender
equity with productivity objectives. The gender conflicts rife in Gambian
irrigation projects point to the significance of female labour for contemporary
patterns of agrarian transformation as well as the linkage between women’s
access to land for independent farming and forms of project participation.

INTRODUCTION

The 1968-73 Sahelian drought ushered in a new era of agricultural

development strategies in The Gambia which were to have far-
reaching effects on peasant farmers generally and especially on
women. International development agencies began ‘drought proof-
ing’ regional economies by constructing irrigation infrastructures to
extend agriculture for year-round cultivation (Franke and Chasin,
1980; Derman, 1984; CRED, 1985). The subsequent trajectory of
Gambian irrigated agriculture has emphasized rice and vegetables,
t w o crops traditionally grown by women.
Both crops have emerged as central to donor and state efforts
towards economic restructuring. Rice and vegetables receive policy
and funding support for their potential to improve foreign exchange
reserves by reducing cereal imports and developing The Gambia’s
comparative advantage as a winter vegetable supplier to European

Development and Chonge (SAGE. London, Newbury Park and New Delhi), Vol. 23
(1992) No. 2. 67-90.
68 J .A. Carney

markets. But the commercialization of these crops has proceeded

amid a welter of conflicting productivity and equity objectives.
Donor efforts to target Gambian women in the development process
have become linked to the broader goal of restructuring the peasant
labour process for year-round irrigated production. Contract farm-
ing has emerged as the instrument favoured by both multilateral
donors and the state to achieve equity and productivity goals.
This article traces the convergence of contract farming with
gender equity objectives in Gambian irrigated rice and vegetable
production over the past decade to illuminate three issues: first, the
specific position women are assuming in national strategies of
economic transformation; second, the way in which new forms of
commoditization are heightening gender conflicts over access to
productive resources; and, finally, the significance of women's
struggles over land access for their participation in contract
farming.
The article is divided into four parts. Following a brief commen-
tary on contract farming, the discussion shifts in the next two sec-
tions to its emergence in irrigated rice development and, more
recently, irrigated horticulture. The contradictions posed by con-
tract farming for the gender equity objectives of international
donors are discussed in the conclusion.

TRANSFORMING AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION:

CONTRACT FARMING

Over the past decade contract farming has received increasing sup-
port from the private sector and international donor community as
a promising strategy to transform peasant farming from a static to
a dynamic sector (World Bank, 1981; Glover, 1984; Williams and
Karen, 1984).' Contract farming represents a distinct social organi-
zation of labour in which peasant producers are linked to either
transnational corporations, private individuals or the state, to
supply agricultural commodities to specifications established in
advance by an oral or written contract (Jarosz, 1987; Watts et al..
1988; Watts, 1990). These arrangements often commit farmers to
the use of specific inputs such as seeds, fertilizers and pesticides, in
exchange for technical assistance and marketing outlets provided by
suppliers (Jarosz, 1987: 3). By facilitating technology transfer to
smallholders and improving their access to inputs and markets,
Peasant Women and Economic Transformation 69

contract farming is frequently presented as a contract of reciprocity,

one of mutual benefit to producer and supplier (Clapp, 1988).
While the marketing and commodity characteristics of contract
farming have received considerable research emphasis (Morrissy,
1974; Binswanger and Rosenzweig, 1986), less attention has focused
on its impact on the peasant labour process (Buch-Hansen and
Marcussen, 1982). Contract farming reorganizes agriculture to con-
form with production schedules that demand strict timing of
peasant work routines. This labour-intensifying feature of contract
farming is poorly researched, yet, as we shall see below, proved cen-
tral to the conjunction of contract farming with gender equity objec-
tives in The Gambia.

IRRIGATED RICE DEVELOPMENT: FOOD

SECURITY OBJECTIVES

In 1966, just after independence, The Gambia began to realize an

unfulfilled colonial policy objective: the development of pump-
irrigated rice schemes. Over the next two decades more than 4000 ha
of women’s swamp rice land were converted to double-cropped
irrigated perimeters (Figure 1). The impetus for this development
was domestic substitution of imported rice, which had climbed to
nearly 9000 tons per annum (Carney, 1986). Increased rice depen-
dency was occurring at the same time that export values for the
country’s chief cash crop, peanuts, were declining; funding by
Taiwan (1966-74), the World Bank (1973-6), and mainland China
(1975-9) aimed to staunch foreign exchange losses by making
the country self-reliant in production of the dietary staple
(Carney, 1986).
The first phase of Gambian rice development lasted until 1980.
Despite differing ideological perspectives, the donors followed a
similar development strategy: implementing small-scale perimeters
averaging 30 ha, in rural communities. Land was not alienated from
the patrilocal, extended, polygynous family farm unit. Even though
rice is traditionally a woman’s crop in The Gambia, each donor
agency introduced the green revolution production package to
household heads, assuming family labour would be forthcoming for
year-round cultivation. However, the donors’ joint utility view of
Gambian household-based production ignored four crucial charac-
teristics of the farming system that had evolved among rice-growing
Figure 1. Small-scale Irrigated Rice Schemes: The Gambia, 1966-80
Source: Carney, 1986.
Peasant Women and Economic Transformation 71

ethnic groups. These factors, summarized below, were to frustrate

double-cropping objectives.
1. A distinct gender division of labour by crop: in rice-growing
areas, Gambian women traditionally grow rice while men cultivate
rain-fed cereals (maize, millet and sorghum).
2. A spatial division of labour: women’s agricultural production
is concentrated chiefly in lowland swamps and men’s on the
uplands.
3. The predominance of men in export crop production: peanuts,
The Gambia’s principal export crop, are cultivated on sandy, free-
draining upland soils and in rice-growing regions, primarily by
men.’
4. A pattern of labour and property rights on the family land-
holding that makes a distinction between production for com-
munal subsistence needs and production for individual use or
exchange.
Landholding in the Gambian household-based production system
is divided into two types of land use categories that carry distinct
labour obligations and crop rights.’ The vast majority of plots con-
stituting a farm holding are termed household fields, and their pur-
pose is to meet the overall subsistence needs of the family unit. All
able-bodied family members are required to provide labour on these
fields, and the produce comes under control of the male household
head who arranges storage and distribution to dependents and their
families. In rice-growing regions women traditionally cultivate low-
land rice on household fields while men use the uplands for planting
cereals or peanuts, which can be converted to cash for supplemental
food purchases by the family unit.
In return for labouring on household fields, dependent sons, their
wives and older children are granted usufruct to a smaller portion
of the household’s farmholding. This subset of household land,
referred to as individual fields, grants dependent family members
plots for cash cropping. In rice-cultivation areas men grow peanuts
for sale, as do women of the Fula and Serahuli ethnic groups.
Women’s economic activities among the dominant ethnic group, the
Mandinka, however, centre on less remunerative rice cultivation.
On individual plots family members control the products of their
labour and realize the benefits from sale.4
The first phase of Gambian irrigated rice projects perturbed this
land use production system in several critical ways. First, household
heads, to whom the production package was introduced, termed the
72 J.A. Carney

developed land ‘household fields’. As the schemes incorporated

many of the Mandinka women’s former individual plots, the
designation frequently left them with no land for cash crop produc-
tion. Second, by introducing improved rice production to male
household heads, the donors unwittingly established a tradition for
men to assume control over technological change in a crop tradi-
tionally cultivated by women (Dey, 1980). Finally, although the
schemes were established to generate surpluses through double crop-
ping, household field labour obligations had developed traditionally
in the context of one five-month agricultural season. Despite ‘nam-
ing’ pump-irrigated plots household fields, there was no precedent
for household heads to invoke female labour obligations for two
cropping seasons (Carney, 1986).
A major consequence of small-scale irrigated schemes was the
evolution of a new land use pattern in the pumped plots which
honoured women’s customary land rights but conflicted with donor
and state productivity objectives. During the dry season the plots
functioned as intended and women discharged their household
labour obligation. However, in the wet season men and Serahuli
women turned to their more remunerative upland peanut crop.’
Mandinka females, on the other hand, converted the irrigated plot
to an individual field for rain-fed rice cultivation.6 The initial
phase of Gambian irrigated rice development consequently closed
with several tensions that were to structure labour and land use in
a subsequent large-scale project implemented in central Gambia: (1)
women had become marginalized from technological improvement
in a crop they traditionally cultivated; (2) Mandinka females’ ability
to exercise their crop rights depended on access to rice land; and
(3) the emergent land use pattern that upheld women’s crop rights
conflicted with donor and state objectives to realize year-round
pumped production.
At the close of the first phase of Gambian irrigated rice develop-
ment, the country was far from its goal of food security. By 1980
milled imports accounted for 50 per cent of domestic consumption,
which prompted the state to seek donor assistance for another form
of irrigated rice production that would provide muscle to double-
cropping objectives (Carney, 1988). The Jahaly-Pacharr irrigated
rice project, which began operation in 1984 under the direction of
the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD),
introduced significant changes over previous schemes (Figure 2).’
Jahaly-Pacharr is a large-scale project that links 2000 households in
Peasant Women and Economic Transformation 73

-
0 50 100 k m
SENEGAL

Figure 2. The Jahaly-Pacharr Project Area

Source: Adapted From Saine (1988).

seventy villages through a centralized pumping and water delivery

system.' A network of tertiary and quaternary canals gives the
Gambian management the means to control water deliveries to the
basic 0.5 ha plot unit. The government made project implementa-
tion dependent on a land lease which it successfully negotiated with
district authorities and village headmen. The land lease enables the
management to tie plot usufruct to double cropping while contract
farming has been deployed to recast household labour routines for
strict production schedules. (See Figure 3 for comparative labour
requirements between peanuts, swamp rice and cultivation on the
project's pumped plots.) Participating households are advanced
inputs on credit and are linked to marketing channels through the
government's co-operatives.
 I
.
P

DRY SEASON

Figure 3 . Comparative Labour Requirements

Source: Carney fieldwork data.
Peasant Women and Economic Transforrnation 75

The Jahaly-Pacharr project heralded yet another significant

departure from the earlier phase of Gambian irrigated rice develop-
ment. Aware of Dey’s (1980, 1981) research on the deleterious
effects of previous irrigation schemes for women’s economic oppor-
tunities, the donors proclaimed female rice farmers the principal
beneficiaries (IFAD. 198 1) - an action that received international
praise for gender equity objectives (Rycroft, 1985; African Busi-
ness, 1986). However, the donors’ intent conflicted with produc-
tivity goals fashioned by contract farming.
Project plot allocations had been made on the basis of household
labour availability and, significantly, women’s pre-existing tillage
rights. Production schedules were adjusted to the disposition of
family labour for double cropping and particularly, the availability
of female labour in the rice fields during the wet season when peanut
cultivation commenced. While the donors registered the plots in
female farmers’ names, no change was forthcoming in resource con-
trol. Male household heads, with support from the Gambian
management, invoked ‘tradition’ to claim the developed plots as
household fields. Arguing that the household field designation pro-
vided the only institutional means to recruit family labour for year-
round paddy production mollified the donors but obfuscated the
important interests served by this decision. Political alliances by the
ruling government party with district chiefs and village headmen
were being cemented with project development, and would be
disturbed by a shift in resource control to women.’ The govern-
ment’s decision to raise the producer paddy rice with project
development in tandem with the scheme’s surplus-generating poten-
tial promised substantial profits which would come under control of
the household head (Carney, 1986). The naming of the project’s
plots as household fields thus enabled the household head to make
claims to women’s unpaid labour when in practice the plot functions
in part as his individual field capable of generating investable
surpluses for accumulation (Carney, 1986, 1988).
Contract farming in irrigated rice resulted in dramatic changes in
women’s labour, access to land and economic opportunities. By
absorbing pre-existing swamp rice fields, the project disenfran-
chised Mandinka female farmers from access to individual plots.’”
Their initial response revolved around getting the management to
designate non-pumped project land as their individual fields, but
they encountered little institutional support for their land rights.
Their strategies consequently coalesced with those of the women of
76 J . A . Carney

other ethnic groups who began demanding labour remuneration in

paddy from the household head for wet season cultivation. As
contract-farming production schedules and continued household
participation in the project rely heavily on female labour avail-
ability, women in the vast majority of project households managed
to negotiate recompense for their labour (Carney, 1988). Elemen-
tary share-cropping relations have developed between dependent
females and the male household head with women receiving a por-
tion of paddy production that averages about 10 per cent of total
paddy output, with a value of US$30-85 (1987) per annum. But in
about 20 per cent of project households, women were unable to
negotiate labour remuneration.” As a consequence, they withdrew
their labour from the households’ irrigated plots. These Mandinka
women have developed a number of alternative, albeit less satisfac-
tory, income-generating alternatives which include: ( 1 ) marketing
vegetables, condiments and prepared food; (2) vegetable gardening
for sale; (3) planting peanuts when land is available; and (4) labour
for wages. However, to improve daily wage rates women have con-
verted their traditional reciprocal labour networks into work groups
for hire during peak farming operations like weeding and trans-
planting. By pooling their labour for group hire, women have been
able to push up their daily wage rates to about US$0.70 per day
(Carney, 1987).
In sum, contract farming has shifted many women into share-
cropping relations with male household heads, proletarianized
others and converted some female rice farmers into wage workers
on the project’s plots. Where women formerly realized the benefits
of their labour on individual plots directly, they are now dependent
on the outcome of intra- and inter-household negotiations for
income. Even though these strategies have sometimes resulted in
improved wage rates, land loss remains for them the legacy of rice
development projects and the basis for their struggles. One female
farmer forcefully expressed this awareness in a BBC documentary
filmed in the project area: ‘we were asleep then, but now we are
awake’.’’ A major outcome of women’s experience with contract
farming in the project area is the pursuit of collective strategies to
re-establish long-term land access. Over the past five years these
strategies have increasingly focused on establishing vegetable gar-
dens in male-controlled uplands (Carney, 1986; Schroeder, 1989).”
Market gardens are providing rural Gambian women with an
avenue to reconstitute individual crop rights where land access has
Peasant Women and Economic Transformation 77

experienced considerable erosion - a process similar to that

unfolding with female vegetable growers located along the country’s
coastal peri-urban corridor.

IRRIGATED HORTICULTURE: DEVELOPING THE

GAMBIA’S COMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE

Although the policy emphasis on horticultural exports is fairly

recent, Gambian women have long been involved in vegetable
gardening for subsistence and exchange. The first European to
describe The Gambia, Cadamosto, noted in 1455 an active dry
season vegetable trade, while eighteenth-century travellers observed
women cultivating vegetables in household gardens and in rotation
with rice in lowland swamps (Crone, 1937; Adansoc, 1759; Park,
1799). Vegetable gardening also received encouragement during the
colonial period, but its expansion was limited by the elementary
technology utilized t o obtain water for dry season cultivation -
shadufs, in which river water is fetched by hand for plot
irrigation. l4
The groundwork for the contemporary horticultural trade dates
back to the 1970s when the state, in conjunction with private capital
and international aid, began establishing boreholes, sprinkler
systems and concrete-lined wells for dry season irrigated produc-
tion.” A warm winter climate and geographic proximity to Europe
(six hours by air) encouraged policy support for The Gambia’s com-
parative advantage as a winter fruit and vegetable supplier to Euro-
pean markets, as did favourable tariffs and the removal of export
taxes on fresh produce with IMF restructuring in 1985 (Government
of The Gambia, 1987; Jack, 1990). In the five years following IMF
economic reforms, annual vegetable and fruit exports to Europe
have grown to 3000 tons with a value exceeding US$l million (Jack,
1 990).
While non-governmental organizations (NCOs) have been active
in helping women’s groups develop about 340 small-scale vegetable
gardens (ca 0.5-2 ha) in rural Gambia (Nath, 1985; Sumberg and
Okali, 1987; Schroeder, 1989; DeCosse and Camara, 1990), the
export sector remains concentrated in the peri-urban corridor along
the Atlantic coast near the capital and airport, where private land-
holding is interspersed with communal tenure (Table 1).
Established women’s vegetable gardening groups provided the
78 J.A. Carney

basis for the development of the Gambian horticultural trade. In the

early 1970s the Ministry of Agriculture established pilot onion-
growing schemes with women’s groups in the western region of the
country, which proved the feasibility of dry season production for
export. With the emergence of markets and fiscal incentives, the
horticultural subsector expanded in the peri-urban area onto para-
statals and farms owned by private individuals or senior government
officials. In the 1980s private holdings devoted to mixed fruit and
vegetable production increased with the entry of Gambian busi-
nessmen and residents of Levantine and South Asian origin. Pro-
duction is currently dominated by about sixteen growers on lo00 ha
of privately owned land. Most of the private holdings funnel their
production t o two exporters (a Lebanese and an East African
Indian) who control 75 per cent of the air freight space to Europe
(Jack, 1990, pers. comm.).
Female labour has been critical to the development of export pro-
duction on these commercial farms. In the initial transition when
orchards were established in mangos, papayas, avocados and citrus,
women’s groups were often granted usufruct to a vegetable garden
in return for watering the trees. But their land access frequently ter-
minated when the fruit trees matured (Gaye et al., 1988). The con-
version of state and private farms to year-round operations with
boreholes and sprinkler systems, however, has created a demand for
female labour in vegetable production. Women perform most of the
labour-demanding farm operations such as sowing, transplanting,
weeding, harvesting and grading produce quality. Employed on
a wage or piece-work basis, women’s seasonal incomes average
US$70-80 (Table 2).
Since 1986 the ‘women in development’ international lobby has
influenced three multilateral donors - the United Nations Devel-
opment Programme (UNDP), the European Economic Community
(EEC) and the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) - to target women
in Gambian horticultural development by establishing thirteen
smaller (5-15 ha) projects on communal land in the peri-urban cor-
ridor. Donor involvement has strengthened the efforts of women’s
groups to secure usufruct to village land for a communal garden
through village headmen. Once established, women divide the
garden plot into individual allocations. The donors subsidize the
irrigation infrastructure, fencing and often in the initial years, inputs
and credit. But vegetable gardening poses t w o major problems
for female farmers. More labour intensive than cereal farming,
Peasant Women and Economic Transformation 79

L
0

2 N
mI ?
0
80 J . A . Carney

Table 2. Female Labour Remuneration by Vegetable Scheme Type

Dominant labour Average dry season income per

Type system woman (dalasis)"

Peri-urban
1. Parastatal W 550
2. Private w,p 500
3. Communal
Borehole CF 500
Well' CF 300
Rural
NGO' S 250
Non-NGO S 100

W = wage; P = piece work; CF = contract farming; S = self.

Nores: (1990) US$ I = 7 dalasis; bfuel costs subsidized; 'inputs subsidized.

Source: Carney, 1990 fieldwork data.

horticultural production adds to women's agricultural and house-

hold work burdens. As a consequence, the marketing of highly
perishable produce poses a considerable difficulty. Vegetable gar-
dening, moreover, relies on expensive imported inputs like seeds,
fertilizers and pesticides which must be purchased in advance of
crop sales. Contract farming is viewed as a solution to these pro-
blems by the multilateral donors who, since 1989, have linked
women's communal gardens to the credit and marketing channels
organized by private growers (Gambian Horticultural Improvement
Project, 1991).
On the surface contract farming appears to present advantages to
both large-scale private growers and women's gardening groups.
Contracting with a large grower enables women to obtain costly
inputs on credit as well as securing market outlets for their produce.
Conversely, contract farming enables large growers to augment pro-
duce supplies for export. However, the presumed reciprocity of this
arrangement is cast into doubt upon review of the types of problems
that surfaced between communal women's groups and large growers
during 1989-90. These problems illustrate women's economic
vulnerability with contract growing as well as highlighting the sub-
sidy which their labour provides to the horticultural export sector.
Gambian horticultural contractors do not use written contracts
Peasant Women and Economic Transformation 81

with women’s groups, preferring verbal arrangements in which the

contractor promises to purchase a set quantity of a specific crop.
These agreements may or may not include seed and credit advances.
Verbal agreements, however, enable the contractor to shift the risks
of export crop production onto the women as well as appropriate a
large share of the value created by their labour. This occurs in
several ways. When there is a market glut or shift in export
demands, the contractor may forgo promised purchases. As local
demand for specialty vegetables is limited, defaulted agreements
leave women with few outlets for their produce.16 Distress sales of
highly perishable produce bring few financial rewards for a season’s
labour.” The failure of growers to honour purchases made
through verbal agreements emerged as a recurrent problem in
1989-90.
A second abuse occurs when the contractor advances inputs on
credit for repayment from sales. Women have little protection from
being overcharged for the credit extended to them. One women’s
group, contracted to plant chillies in 1989, received only half the
market rate after the costs of the inputs were discounted. This
prompted them in the following season to procure their own seeds
to bargain up the price of their chillies. The grower, however,
budged little on his price offer. Already committed to planting
chillies, the women’s group had to accept his terms (Planas, 1990).
The buyer’s right to determine quality grades for export operates
as an additional means to depress women’s returns from vegetable
gardening. Many women’s groups complain that high-quality pro-
duce is often graded at an inferior standard, which reduces the price
they receive. The transfer of value from female producers to the
contractor through grading practices is a frequently encountered
abuse in contract farming.
Female gardeners, however, do not meekly accept such abuses; in
fact, they have consistently pursued strategies to improve their posi-
tion, including the threat of legal action. In 1989 when one contrac-
tor refused to honour his purchase agreement with a women’s
garden group, a donor representative had to step in to dissuade them
from taking the grower to court. Not only were the women unlikely
to get a hearing in the absence of a written contract, but attempted
legal action would probably result in other export growers
blacklisting the group (Planas, 1990).
Such conflicts seriously call into question the mutuality that pre-
sumably underlies contract farming production relations as well as
82 J.A. Carney

its ability to improve women’s welfare and income generation. By

shifting marketing risks onto female growers, contractors reduce
their losses as well as female returns to labour from export hor-
ticultural development in The Gambia. Annual incomes for women
in communal gardens with contract farming average US$58-89 (see
Table 3), far below the average per capita income of US$260.
Whether working as hired hands on large farms or for themselves
on individual plots in communal gardens, women’s labour rates vary
little, falling between 5 and 7 dalasis a day. This is low recompense
for vegetable gardening, which is highly labour intensive, especially
in women’s sites, generally dependent upon wells for hand-watering.
Gardens require two waterings a day which in areas of deep-dug
wells average two hours per session, but may reach seven hours in
rural areas with shallow wells (Smith et al., 1985).
Irrespective of where women’s gardens are located, the additional
labour of their daughters and co-wives is important in maintaining
production schedules on a daily and seasonal basis. The IDB
schemes, improved with a borehole and sprinkler system, provide
the only exception to this general pattern. Since water is pumped,
women do not have to journey daily to the garden. However, pro-
duction costs of the borehole system are extremely high: 43 per cent
of produce value (Table 3), with 96 per cent of those expenditures

Table 3. Women3 per Capita Income: Representative Communal

Gardens Peri-Urban Area

Wet season Dry season Annual income

I989 1990 (dalasis)
IDB (borehole)
Produce value 37,507 134,753 172,260
Production costs - 16,034
~~~~
- 56,608
_ _ - 72,642
Net garden income 21,473 78.145 99,618
Per capita
garden income
(160 members) I34 488 622
UNDP (well)
Produce value 58,375 142,200 200,575
Per capita
garden income
(490 members) I I9 290 409

Source: Gambian Horticultural Improvement Project (1991).

Peasant Women and Economic Transformation 83

going on imported supplies like diesel.’* Dependence on volatile

import prices and irregular fuel oil deliveries into the country have
reduced the benefits women receive on the borehole schemes, and
raise serious questions regarding their long-term sustainability
(Barrett and Browne, 1991).
With Gambian horticultural development, multilateral donors
have once again implemented ‘women in development’ projects that
champion contract farming for gender equity objectives. Credit
advances and expanded marketing outlets have facilitated female
entry into commercialized vegetable production. But vegetable
cultivation is labour demanding and requires conformity with
quality standards and tight production schedules for export that are
regulated by private growers. Whether a woman works as a wage
labourer on a state or private farm or as a contracted farmer on
communal gardens, her income opportunities are severely limited.
With daily labour rates that hover below US$l, female labour main-
tains The Gambia’s edge in competitive export markets while sub-
sidizing the profits accumulated by the private sector within the
country.

CONCLUSION

The growing pressure of the ‘women in development’ group on inter-

national agencies to target female farmers by direct policy measures
found expression in the 1980s through multilateral-funded develop-
ment projects in The Gambia.” Women were to become the prin-
cipal beneficiaries of Gambian irrigated rice and vegetable projects
and thus benefit from commercialized production of their tradi-
tional crops. But the donors’ equity concerns were inscribed within
a broader policy context that aimed to restructure and intensify
labour routines through contract farming. The convergence of
equity with productivity objectives has unfolded with contradictory
consequences for women’s labour, income opportunities and access
to land for independent farming.
Female labour and agronomic experience are crucial to contem-
porary strategies of economic transformation, yet women capture
little of the value from their toil. They perform the labour-intensive
field operations in both irrigated rice and vegetable production
while most of the benefits derived from their labour flow :o male
household heads, the state or private contractors. Despite women’s
84 J . A . Carney

ongoing struggles with men to force up the value of their labour

power, female income levels generally remain below the government
minimum daily wage scale of 9 dalasis. With the returns to labour
so meagre, these case studies suggest that more than the lack of
alternative income-earning possibilities may be at play in women’s
participation in contract farming.
While contract farming provides Jahaly-Pacharr households with
access to credit and markets, women’s benefits are nominal and
largely a reflection of the value they have managed to negotiate for
their labour power. The value of female labour in the project area,
however, was deeply imbricated with the issue of land access. Those
Mandinka females made landless by project implementation were
p!aced in a more vulnerable position than women of other ethnic
groups whose upland individual fields were undisturbed by the
scheme’s development. Women’s access to individual plots within
the project area consequently proved pivotal to their ability to
negotiate forms of labour remuneration. For Mandinka females,
radical responses such as labour withdrawal and the formation of
work groups for hire sometimes proved their only means to counter
household pressures to toil all year round without compensation.
While the Jahaly-Pacharr project involved women in contract farm-
ing through sale of their labour power or elementary share-cropping
relations, its longer-lasting effect was to catapult women into
organizing as a group for their common interests. A significant
focus of Mandinka women’s collective strategies over the past five
years is their attempt to secure access to male-controlled uplands
through NGO-supported vegetable gardens.
A concomitant process is under way with a different target group
of women in the coastal peri-urban corridor where urbanization,
tourist development and the proliferation of horticultural projects
have increased the pace of land concentration over the past twenty
years through private as well as communal landholdings, and led to
a reduction in female access to farmland.2o The availability of
multilateral funding to women’s groups for irrigated vegetable pro-
duction has provided females with an important venue for nego-
tiating land rights through village headmen. But their usufruct
to upland areas for gardens remains tenuous.” Maintaining har-
monious relations with donors and following their directives
becomes instrumental in women’s strategies to defend access to
individual plots and figures prominently in female compliance with
contract-farmed vegetable schemes.
Peasant Women and Economic Transformation 85

Berry (1986) pointed out the centrality of access to and control

over resources for understanding contemporary patterns of African
agrarian transformation. Donor funding for Gambian irrigation
projects over the past twenty-five years has triggered numerous
struggles for control over productive resources at the state, regional
and household levels. Land concentration has occurred in both
private and communal holdings - a process that is increasing
socio-economic differentiation as well as gender conflict. As land
becomes scarce, women in farm households are particularly
affected. By undermining women’s access to resources for indepen-
dent farming, female labour power is ‘freed’ for the accumulation
objectives of husbands, village headmen, state officials and private
entrepreneurs. But the deleterious effects of commoditization d o
not go unchallenged by women. New forms of incorporation into
the international economy, like contract farming, explode with con-
flicts between men and women over household labour mobilization.
Consequently, the issue of women’s access to land for independent
farming not only emerges as central to contemporary gender con-
flicts, but also underscores the crucial linkage of the changing sexual
division of labour for emergent class structures in sub-Saharan
Africa (Mackintosh, 1989).
A number of researchers have drawn attention to labour as the
primary constraint in African agricultural development (Watts,
1983; Berry, 1986; Richards, 1986; Mbilinyi, 1988). By intensifying
female labour demands and subordinating work routines to produc-
tion schedules, contract farming exacerbates the comparative
advantage of women’s disadvantage (Staudt, 1987; Mackintosh,
1989). While the evidence collected in these Gambian case studies
concurs with Kandiyoti’s (1990) and Whitehead’s (1990) observation
that ‘women in development’ projects do not accord well with the
implementation of more efficient forms of labour control, it also
points to the significance of gender-based struggles over resources
for the forms of female participation in contract farming.

NOTES

I . Contract farming, however, is not new to Africa; its antecedents date 10 the late
colonial period. One of the earliest British attempts at contract farming occurred in
The Gambia. During the 1950s the Colonial Development Corporation unsuc-
cessfully attempted contract farming in a rice project (the Gambia Rice Farm) now
a part of the Jahaly-Pacharr project (Dey. 1991, pers. comm.).
86 J.A. Carney

2. While this point is generally accurate, it should be noted that women of the
Serahuli and Fula ethnic groups may also grow groundnuts in rice-growing areas. In
non-rice farming regions women of any ethnic group may cultivate the leading cash
crops, cotton and peanuts.
3. A more complete discussion of this landholding system is provided in Dey
(1980 and 1982) and Carney (forthcoming).
4. In rural Gambia a small percentage of rice plots may also be ‘owned’ by
individuals. Individually owned plots, created by clearing and cultivating unclaimed
land, are independent of household control. In the case of women, individually
owned land is frequently inherited o r passed on to daughters rather than daughters-
in-law. For more detail see Dey (1980) and Webb (1989).
5 . Again, this was a general pattern as some men did cultivate irrigated rice dur-
ing the wet season. Factors affecting their decision to do so included: ( I ) relative
shifts in producer prices that favoured rice over peanuts; (2) the availability of female
labour for transplanting and weeding irrigated rice; and (3) plots with favourable
drainage for water control.
6. The Gambia’s population is distributed among five major ethnic groups:
Mandinka (40 per cent), Fulani (16 per cent), Wolof (14 per cent), Jola (9 per cent)
and Serahuli (8 per cent). All but the Wolof and Fulani traditionally cultivate rice.
Jola rice-production systems are located in rain-fed and inland swamp areas of the
western portion of the country. Pump-irrigated rice development has expanded in the
freshwater tidal-irrigated areas of central and upper Gambia where Mandinka and
Serahuli settlement is concentrated (Figure I ) .
7 . Other donors of the Jahaly-Pacharr project include the African Development
Bank, the World Food Programme and the governments of the Netherlands and
Germany.
8. The Jahaly-Pacharr project includes 1500 ha, of which 560 are pump irrigated
and the remainder used for improved rain-fed and tidal cultivation during the wet
season. This discussion focuses on contract farming on the pumped plots. See Carney
(forthcoming) for patterns of women’s access to the non-pumped plots.
9. Male resistance to donor equity goals surfaced in the preliminary land distri-
bution when men received 90 per cent of the project’s plots. The donors intervened
to reverse the process and register the plots in women’s names. Men acquiesced only
after local leaders received assurance from the Gambian management that the plots
would come under control of the male household head (Carney, 1986).
10. See Carney (forthcoming) for a discussion of ethnic factors regulating
women’s access to individual plots.
I I . Ethnicity and the resource position of households were important variables in
women’s success in labour compensation (Carney, 1988).
12. A Mandinka project woman quoted in a BBC documentary. The Losl
Harvest, produced by Sarah Hobson in 1983.
13. Some Mandinka project women are now growing peanuts on borrowed land
over which they have n o long-term claim. Attempts to re-establish long-term land
claims for independent farming are instead focusing o n an upland field, of 2 ha or
less, for a village women’s garden.
14. National Archives of The Gambia, files 21961. 4717 and 47/40.
IS. Among the donors involved are several affiliates of the United Nations, the
Club du Sahel/CILLS (Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in
the Sahel), the European Economic Community, the Islamic Development Bank, the
Peasant Women and Economic Transformation 87

German government and about six non-governmental organizations.

16. Local markets include sales t o a small expatriate community, a few super-
markets and tourist hotels. The tourist hotels and supermarkets, however, rely on
imported frozen vegetables and only purchase about 10 per cent of their supplies
locally, chiefly fresh fruits, tomatoes and onions.
17. Producers earn about 25 per cent of the value from middlewomen’s sales to
hotels (Jack, 1990, pers. comm.).
18. For example, borehole gardens require 50 litres per day of imported diesel for
dry season irrigation.
19. The multilateral donor emphasis on women continued into the 1 9 9 0 s with the
World Bank’s USSlS million pilot ‘Women in Development’ project in The Gambia,
funded for a five-year period. Covering nearly every economic activity affecting
women, the project also aims to strengthen the entrepreneurial skills of market mid-
dlewomen and private traders (World Bank, 1990).
20. Nearly 100,OOO tourists (principally from England, Germany and Sweden)
annually visit The Gambia between November and April. This provides a market for
some locally produced fruits and vegetables, but most food items (including perish-
ables) are imported. For a critical view of the weak linkages between the tourist sector
and local production, see Lacville (1991).
21. See Schroeder and Watts (1990) for a discussion of men’s attempts to regain
control over some rural women’s vegetable gardens by planting fruit trees, as well as
Dey (1990) for a broader overview of the significance of gender issues for the design
of sustainable irrigation schemes in Africa.

REFERENCES

Adanson, M. (1759) A Voyage lo Senegal, The Isle of Goree and fhe River Gambia.
London: Nourse.
African Business (1986) ‘After Rice Success Will Bridge-Barrage Be Next’ (January)
pp. 21-3.
Barrett, H. and Browne, A. (1991) ‘Environmental and Economic Sustainability:
Women’s Horticultural Production in The Gambia’, Geography 760): 241-8.
Berry, S. (1986) ‘Concentration without Privatisation: Agrarian Consequences of
Changing Patterns of Rural Land Control in Africa’, paper presented at sym-
posium on Agricultural Policy and African Food Security: Issues, Prospects and
Constraints, Toward the Year 2000, University of Illinois, Center for African
Studies, Champaign (24-6 April).
Binswanger, H. and Rosenzweig, M. (1986) ‘Behavioral and Market Determinants of
Production Relations in Agriculture’, The Journal of Developmenf Sfudies
22(3): 503-39.
Buch-Hansen, M. and Marcussen, H. (1982) ‘Contract Farming and the Peasantry:
Cases from Western Kenya’, Review of African Political Economy 23: 9-36.
Carney, J . (1986) ‘The Social History of Gambian Rice Production: An Analysis of
Food Security Strategies’, PhD dissertation, Geography Department, University
of California, Berkeley.
Carney, J. (1987) ‘Contract Farming in Irrigated Rice Production: Jahaly Pacharr
 J.A. Carney

Project, The Gambia’, Contract Farming in Africa Project, Working Paper

No. 8. Binghamton, NY: Institute for Development Anthropology (IDA).
Carney, J. (1988) ‘Struggles over Crop Rights and Labour within Contract Farming
Households in a Gambian Irrigated Rice Project’, Journal of Peasant Srudies
I5(3): 334-49.
Carney, J. (forthcoming) ‘Contracting A Food Staple in The Gambia’, in P. Little
and M. Watts (eds) Peasants Under Contract: Contract Farming und Agrarian
Transformation in Sub-Saharan Africa. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Clapp, R. (1988) ‘Representing Reciprocity, Reproducing Domination: Ideology and
the Labour Process in Latin American Contract Farming’, Journal of Peasan/
SIUdieS 16( I): 5-39.
CRED (Center for Research on Economic Development) (1985) Rural Development
in the Gambian River Basin. Ann Arbor, MI: CRED.
Crone, G.R. (1937) The Voyage of Cadamosro. London: The Hakluyt Society.
DeCosse, P. and Camara, E. (1990) ‘A Profile of the Horticultural Production
Sector in The Gambia’. The Gambia: Department of Planning, Ministry of
Agriculture.
Derman, W. (1984) ‘USAID in the Sahel’, in J. Barker (ed.) The Politics of Agri-
culture in Tropical Africa, pp. 77-91. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Dey. J . (1980) ‘Women and Rice in The Gambia: The Impact of Irrigated Rice
Development Projects in The Farming System’, PhD dissertation, Sociology
Department, University of Reading.
Dey, J . (1981) ‘Gambian Women: Unequal Partners in Rice Development Projects?’,
Journal of Development Studies 17(3): 109-22.
Dey, J. (1982) ‘Development Planning in The Gambia: The Gap Between Planners’
and Farmers’ Perceptions, Expectations and Objectives’, World Development
lO(5): 377-96.
Dey, J . (1990) ‘Design for Sustainable Farmer-managed Irrigation Schemes in sub-
Saharan Africa’, paper for the International Workshop on Design for Sustainable
Farmer-Managed Irrigation Schemes in Sub-Saharan Africa, Wageningen
Agricultural University, Department of Irrigation and Soil and Water Conserva-
tion. The Netherlands (5-8 February).
Franke, R. and Chasin, B. (1980). Seeds of Famine. Totowa, NJ: Allanheld.
Gambian Horticultural Improvement Project (1991) ‘1990 Evaluation of Horti-
cultural Extension Programmes and Operational Plan for 1991’, CHIP, Yun-
dum, The Gambia (mimeo).
Gaye, G.O., Jack, I . and Caldwell, J. (1988) ‘Use of Farming Systems Research
Extension (FSR/E) Methods to Identify Horticultural Research Priorities in The
Gambia, West Africa’, Hortscience 23(1): 21-5.
Glover, D. (1984) ‘Contract Farming and Smallholder Outgrower Schemes in Less-
Developed Countries’, World Development 12(11-12): 1143-57.
Government of The Gambia (1987), ‘Donors Conference on the Agricultural Sector
in The Gambia’. The Gambia: Ministry of Agriculture.
IFAD (International Fund for Agricultural Development) (1981) Jahuly and Pacharr
Appraisal Report. Rome: IFAD.
Jack, I . (1990) ‘Export Constraints and Potentialities for Gambian Horticultural
Produce’, report prepared for the National Horticultural Policy Workshop, Ban-
jul, The Gambia (3-5 December).
Jarosz, L. (1987) ‘Contract Farming and Smallholder Households in Africa’, MA
 Peasant Women and Economic Transformation 89

thesis, Geography Department, University of California, Berkeley.

Kandiyoti. D. (1990) ‘Women and Rural Development Policies: The Changing
Agenda’, Development and Change 21( 1): 5-22.
Lacville, R. (1991) ‘When Tourism’s Profits G o Abroad’, Manchester Guardian
Weekly (May 26): 21.
Mackintosh, M. (1989) Gender, Class and Rural Transition. London: Zed.
Mbilinyi, M.(1988) ‘Agribusiness and Women Peasants in Tanzania’, Development
and Change 19(4): 549-83.
Morrissy, D. (1 974) Agricultural Modernization through Production Contracting.
New York: Praeger.
Nath, K. (1985) ‘Women and Vegetable Gardens in The Gambia: Action Aid and
Rural Development’, Working Paper No. 109. Boston, MA: African Studies
Center, Boston University.
Park, M. (1799) Travels into the Interior of Africa. 1954 edition, London: Eland
Books.
Planas. T. (1990) ‘Women’s Communal Vegetable Growing Schemes’, paper
presented at National Horticultural Policy Workshop, Banjul, The Gambia (3-5
December).
Richards, P. (1986) Coping with Hunger. London: Allen and Unwin.
Rycroft, C . (1985) ‘How Women Were Involved in The Gambia’, International
Agricultural Development 5( I): 24.
Saine. M.D. (1988) Map of the Jahaly-Pacharr Project. Sapu, The Gambia.
Schroeder, R. (1989) ‘Seasonality and Gender Conflict in Irrigated Agriculture:
Mandinka Rice and Vegetable Production in The Gambia’, Co-Evolutionary
Terrains: History, Ecology and Practice in Malagasy and Gambia Rice Systems,
Working Paper No. 4. New York: Rockefeller Foundation.
Schroeder, R. and Watts, M. (1990) ‘Struggling over Strategies, Fighting over Food:
Adjusting to Food Commercialization among Mandinka Peasants in The Gam-
bia, West Africa’, unpublished manuscript, Geography Department, University
of California, Berkeley.
Smith, F.. Jack, I . and Singh, R. (1985) The Survey 01Rural Women’s Vegetable
Growing and Marketing Program. Banjul: Action Aid.
Staudt, K. (1987) ‘Uncaptured or Unmotivated? Women and the Food Crisis in
Africa’, Rural Sociology 52(1): 37-55.
Sumberg, J. and Okali, C. (1987) ‘Workshop on NGO-sponsored Vegetable Garden-
ing Projects in The Gambia’, Yundum, The Gambia: Horticultural Unit of Gam-
bian Department of Agriculture and Oxfam America.
Watts, M. (1983) Silent Violence: Food, Famine and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Watts, M. (1990) ‘Peasants Under Contract: Agro-Food Complexes in the Third
World’, in H. Bernstein, B. Crow. M. Mackintosh and C. Martin (eds) The Food
Question, pp. 149-62. New York: Monthly Review.
Watts, M., Little. P., Mock, C.. Billings, M. and Jaffee. S. (1988) ConrractFarming
in Africa, Vol. I . Binghamton, NY: IDA.
Webb, P. (1989) ‘Intrahousehold Decisionmaking and Resource Control: The
Effects of Rice Commercialization in West Africa’, Working Paper on Commer-
cialization of Agriculture and Nutrition, No. 3 . Washington, DC: International
Food Policy Research Institute.
Whitehead, A. (1990) ‘Food Crisis and Gender Conflict in the African Countryside’,
90 J . A . Carney

in H . Bernstein, 9 . Crow, M. Mackintosh and C. Martin (eds) The Food Ques-

tion, pp. 54-68. New York: Monthly Review.
Williams, S . and Karen, R . (1984) Agribusiness and the Small-Scale Farmer: A
Dynamic Partnership for Development. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
World Bank (1 98 I ) Accelerated Development in Sub-SaharanAfrica: An Agenda for
Action. Washington, DC: World Bank.
World Bank (1990) Republic of The Gambia Women in Development Project.
Washington, DC: World Bank.

Judith Carney is an Assistant Professor of

Geography at the University of California, Los
Angeles, 1255 Bunche Hall, Los Angeles,
California 90024- 1524.