Geoforum 39 (2008) 1687–1697

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Geoforum
j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r. c o m / l o c a t e / g e o f o r u m

From smallholders to transnationals: The impact of changing consumer

preferences in the EU on Ghana’s pineapple sector
Niels Fold, Katherine V. Gough *
Depart­ment of Geog­ra­phy and Geol­ogy, Uni­ver­sity of Copen­ha­gen, Oest­er Vold­gade 10, DK 1350 Copen­ha­gen K, Den­mark

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: This paper explores the impact that a new type of pine­ap­ple, and subsequent chang­ing con­sumer pref­er­
Received 24 May 2007 ences in the Global North, has had on the live­li­hoods of pine­ap­ple grow­ers in Ghana. The paper starts by
Received in revised form 2 June 2008 trac­ing how research and devel­op­ment in Costa Rica by the world’s larg­est pro­duc­ers of pine­ap­ple, Del
Monte and Dole, have resulted in a new vari­ety MD2. This new pine­ap­ple type has been mar­keted in the

EU through cam­paigns car­ried out by plan­ta­tion com­pa­nies via super­mar­kets. Con­sumer pref­er­ences
have sub­se­quently switched to MD2 away from the vari­e­ties which pre­vi­ously dom­i­nated the mar­ket,
Key­words:
includ­ing the Gha­na­ian grown Smooth Cay­enne. Gha­na­ian small­hold­ers have expe­ri­enced a dra­matic
Pine­ap­ples
Small­hold­ers
drop in the demand for Smooth Cay­enne and are unable to switch to grow­ing MD2. The Gha­na­ian pine­ap­
Trans­na­tional com­pa­nies ple sec­tor is con­se­quently being restruc­tured with large-scale pine­ap­ple farms, prin­ci­pally run by trans­na­
Global value chains tional com­pa­nies, grow­ing large quan­ti­ties of MD2 for export. Through a detailed empir­i­cal study of the
Live­li­hoods chang­ing live­li­hoods of pine­ap­ple grow­ers in two set­tle­ments in Ghana, we show how small­hold­ers have
Ghana been affected in dif­fer­ing ways as trans­na­tional com­pa­nies have increas­ingly entered the mar­ket. Recent
attempts to incor­po­rate small­hold­ers as pro­duc­ers of niche pine­ap­ple prod­ucts are dis­cussed. The paper
illus­trates the mutual ben­e­fits of link­ing global value chain anal­y­sis with live­li­hood anal­y­sis.
© 2008 Else­vier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Intro­duc­tion we show how research and devel­op­ment in Costa Rica by the

The observant shop­per in the EU will have noticed that pine­ap­
ples have shrunk in recent years. They have also become sweeter,
juic­ier and more yel­low. This is because the type of pine­ap­ple
being sold has changed from the Smooth Cay­enne vari­ety, pre­dom­
i­nantly sup­plied by Ghana and Côte d’Ivo­ire, to the MD2 vari­ety
devel­oped in Costa Rica. MD2 is sold in the EU under var­i­ous brand
names usu­ally includ­ing words or phrases such as ‘golden’, ‘super
sweet’ and ‘ultra sweet’. In this paper, we explore how the new
type of pine­ap­ple con­quered the mar­ket and the impact this has
had on the live­li­hoods of pine­ap­ple grow­ers in Ghana. In doing so,
we link a global value chain (GVC) anal­y­sis of pine­ap­ples with a
house­hold level anal­y­sis of the chang­ing live­li­hoods of pine­ap­ple
grow­ers in Ghana. By com­bin­ing two lev­els of anal­y­sis1 which are
rarely linked, we are able to explore the dif­fer­en­tial nature of the
impacts of changes in a GVC on small­hold­ers.
We start the paper by trac­ing the dynam­ics of South to
North GVCs for fresh fruit and veg­e­ta­bles (FFVs). Sub­se­quently
* Cor­re­spond­ing author.
E-mail address: kg@ge­ogr.ku.dk (K.V. Gough).
1
As both GVC and live­li­hoods anal­y­sis are widely known, details of these
approaches will not be dis­cussed here. See Bair (2005) for an over­view of GVC anal­
y­sis and de Haan and Zo­o­mers (2005) for a review of live­li­hood stud­ies.
world’s larg­est trans­na­tional pine­ap­ple pro­duc­ers resulted in the
EU mar­ket being tar­geted with MD2. Our atten­tion then turns
to Ghana where pine­ap­ple grow­ers have expe­ri­enced a dra­matic
drop in the demand for their pine­ap­ples as a direct con­se­quence
of chang­ing con­sumer pref­er­ences. Through an anal­y­sis of the
chang­ing live­li­hoods of pine­ap­ple grow­ers in two set­tle­ments in
Ghana, we show how small­hold­ers have been affected in dif­fer­
ing ways as trans­na­tional com­pa­nies have increas­ingly entered
the mar­ket. We then outline recent efforts to incor­po­rate small­
hold­ers in niche-mar­ket pro­duc­tion and the trend towards con­
tin­u­ous prod­uct dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion and mar­ket seg­men­ta­tion. We
con­clude by out­lin­ing the ben­e­fits of link­ing GVC anal­y­sis with
live­li­hoods anal­y­sis.
2. Dynam­ics of global value chains for fresh fruit and
veg­e­ta­bles
Imports of food prod­ucts, in par­tic­u­lar fresh fruit and veg­e­
ta­bles (FFVs), from the Global South to the EU, are increas­ingly
deter­mined by large retail­ers (Gib­bon, 2003; Hum­phrey, 2006;
Kone­fal et al., 2005). Com­pe­ti­tion is high and retail­ers seek to
increase the vol­ume of sales by con­stantly chang­ing sup­plies
and car­ry­ing out com­pre­hen­sive mar­ket­ing cam­paigns. Part of
this practice is to split up exist­ing demand for a group of food

0016-7185/$ - see front matter © 2008 Else­vier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.geoforum.2008.06.004
1688 N. Fold, K.V. Gough / Geoforum 39 (2008) 1687–1697
prod­ucts into seg­mented niche mar­kets of higher priced goods.
These prac­tices are par­tic­u­larly pro­nounced in rela­tion to fresh
­trop­i­cal fruit which is offered in a range of dif­fer­ent forms, col­
ours, and tastes. Although some con­sum­ers are reflex­ive (Cook,
1994, 2004; Cook et al., 1998), pref­er­ences can be con­structed or
influ­enced by advanced mar­ket­ing cam­paigns that play on var­i­
ous strands of human con­scious­ness.
Up to the mid 1990s, most fresh trop­i­cal fruits were sold in
EU super­mar­kets together with other FFV prod­ucts to sig­nal the
diver­sity and exotic nature of the prod­ucts on sale. The trop­i­cal
fruits acted as ‘bait’ to draw cus­tom­ers into super­mar­kets and as
a means to main­tain cus­tomer loy­alty. Since the mid 1990s, how­
ever, trop­i­cal fruits have ‘matured’ as generic prod­ucts and many
have been re-for­mat­ted into var­i­ous niche prod­ucts, often on the
basis of their geo­graph­i­cal ori­gin or the eth­i­cal con­cerns of con­
sum­ers. These phases of intro­duc­tion, mat­u­ra­tion, re-cre­a­tion
and seg­men­ta­tion cor­re­spond with shift­ing forms and degrees of
com­pe­ti­tion among sup­pli­ers (Rear­don and Flo­res, 2006). In the
ini­tial intro­duc­tory phase, com­pe­ti­tion is low and prof­its com­
par­a­tively high as there are few pro­duc­ers and trad­ers upstream
in the chain. As more com­pa­nies (and coun­tries) take advan­tage
of the oppor­tu­ni­ties, the num­ber of sup­pli­ers increases, com­pe­
ti­tion becomes fiercer and prof­it­abil­ity decreases. In the mat­u­ra­
tion phase, con­cen­tra­tion and cen­tral­i­sa­tion takes place among
sup­pli­ers, includ­ing both agri­cul­tural pro­duc­ers and export­
ing/import­ing com­pa­nies. If a niche prod­uct is suc­cess­fully con­
sol­i­dated, com­pe­ti­tion on the deliv­ery price will wipe out the
weaker sup­pli­ers.
A clas­sic exam­ple is the Kenya-UK veg­e­ta­ble chain. A mix­ture
of pub­lic and retailer induced pri­vate stan­dards con­cern­ing prod­
uct appear­ance, con­sumer food safety, the envi­ron­ment, and
labour con­di­tions cre­ated the insti­tu­tional set­ting within which
UK based retail­ers devel­oped their global pur­chas­ing strat­e­gies
(Do­lan and Hum­phrey, 2004). In the ini­tial phase, despite pro­duc­
ing substantial vol­umes of veg­e­ta­bles, small­holder pro­duc­tion
and prod­ucts became increas­ingly costly as the stan­dards and
qual­ity require­ments rose. Almost all fresh veg­e­ta­ble pro­duc­tion
for export is now car­ried out by large con­tract farm­ers linked to
large-scale grower/exporter com­pa­nies with facil­i­ties for trans­
port­ing, sort­ing, cool­ing, pack­ag­ing, and bar-cod­ing. A small num­
ber of small­hold­ers are still involved but they are tightly linked to
grower/export­ers in outg­row­er schemes and are selected accord­
ing to their abil­ity to deliver the requested qual­ity and quan­tity
of par­tic­u­lar prod­ucts. A range of stud­ies con­firm these find­ings
on the impor­tance of stan­dards and their impact on small­holder
involve­ment (Fulp­on­i, 2006; Hen­son and Rear­don, 2005). Recent
research doc­u­ments sim­i­lar trends and con­se­quences in the sourc­
ing strat­e­gies of super­mar­kets located in the Global South (Rear­
don et al., 2003).
The most glob­ally traded fresh trop­i­cal fruits (bananas and pine­
ap­ples) are pri­mar­ily pro­duced in large-scale plan­ta­tions owned by
trans­na­tional com­pa­nies who also engage in con­trac­tual arrange­
ments with local pro­duc­ers. Most of the com­pa­nies have the nec­es­
sary logistic capac­ity for pro­duc­tion in the Global South, ship­ment
(includ­ing refrig­er­ated con­tain­ers and spec­ia­lised ves­sels), and
also own truck­ing com­pa­nies, dis­tri­bu­tion and rip­en­ing cen­tres
in the Global North. Hence, trans­na­tional com­pa­nies involved in
trop­i­cal fruit pro­duc­tion and dis­tri­bu­tion mus­ter substantial cor­
po­rate power and do not con­sent to all the demands of large retail­
ers. These com­pa­nies have become ver­ti­cally inte­grated cat­e­gory
man­ag­ers enabling them to con­trol the pro­duc­tion, har­vest­ing,
2
A cat­e­gory man­ger is respon­si­ble for the logis­tics and orga­ni­sa­tion of a sup­ply
chain in order to pro­vide the right com­bi­na­tion of prod­ucts within a cer­tain cat­e­
gory to super­mar­ket shelves.
pro­cess­ing, pack­ag­ing, ship­ping, stor­ing and mar­ket­ing of a range
of prod­ucts.
2.1. The glob­ali­sa­tion of fresh pine­ap­ples
Due to the lim­ited devel­op­ment in freight tech­nol­ogy for fresh
trop­i­cal fruit, sup­pli­ers of fresh pine­ap­ple ini­tially had to be located
near to major mar­kets. Prior to World War II, almost all Euro­pean
pine­ap­ple con­sump­tion was in the form of pro­cessed pine­ap­ples
pre­served in sugar water and packed in tins. The mod­est demand
for fresh pine­ap­ple in Europe was cov­ered by exports from the
Az­ores. Con­sump­tion of fresh pine­ap­ple increased grad­u­ally up to
the mid 1980s, increas­ingly sup­plied by French plan­ta­tion com­pa­
nies in Côte d’Ivo­ire. Cen­tral Amer­ica grad­u­ally replaced Hawaii as
the main sup­plier of fresh pine­ap­ple to the US (Surya­nat­a, 2000)
but sup­plies from Latin Amer­ica to Europe remained neg­li­gi­ble.
South­east Asia became the cen­tre for pro­duc­tion and pro­cess­ing
of pine­ap­ples, nota­bly the Phil­ip­pines and Thai­land, and sub­se­
quently Indo­ne­sia. The world mar­ket for pro­cessed pine­ap­ple prod­
ucts, includ­ing substantial vol­umes of juice, has been dom­i­nated
by South­east Asian export­ers ever since (Ro­hr­bach et al., 2003).
From the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s, con­sumer enthu­si­asm
for fresh fruit and veg­e­ta­bles grew and sea trans­port tech­niques
with con­tainer cool­ing sys­tems were devel­oped (Fried­land,
1994). Costa Rica and Hon­du­ras increased their exports of fresh
pine­ap­ples to the US, with Costa Rica increas­ingly dom­i­nat­ing
in the lat­ter half of the 1980s (Fig. 1). Exports from Costa Rica
stag­nated in the early 1990s but grew dra­mat­i­cally from the
mid 1990s reach­ing approx­i­mately 700,000 ton­nes in 2004.
Costa Rica has thus come to dom­i­nate the global sup­ply of fresh
pine­ap­ple. Up to the late 1990s, the EU mar­ket was dom­i­nated
by pine­ap­ples from West Africa espe­cially from Côte d’Ivo­ire.
Pro­duc­tion in Côte d’Ivo­ire started to fall after the turn of the
cen­tury but West Afri­can sup­plies to the EU have remained rel­
a­tively con­stant due to increased export from Ghana (Fig. 2).
Dur­ing the past decade, how­ever, grow­ing demand in the EU has
mainly been cov­ered by pine­ap­ples from Costa Rica. Recent data
indi­cates that pine­ap­ples from Costa Rica had a mar­ket share in
the EU of about 69% in 2007 (up from 44% in 2003) reflect­ing the
substantial increase in imported vol­ume from 184,175 ton­nes to
573,832 ton­nes dur­ing the same period (MIR, 2007).
The chang­ing trade pat­terns out­lined above are closely related
to the actions and com­pet­i­tive strat­e­gies of a small num­ber of
trans­na­tional com­pa­nies that have come to dom­i­nate the inter­na­
tional flows of mass-con­sumed trop­i­cal fruits. They are all founded
on trade in bananas, still the most impor­tant trop­i­cal fruit in world
trade. The fresh pine­ap­ple boom is intrin­si­cally linked to one of
these com­pa­nies, Fresh Del Monte Pro­duce. Fresh Del Monte Pro­
duce was one of the first US trans­na­tional com­pa­nies to relo­cate
pro­duc­tion from Hawaii to Costa Rica in the early 1980s. The com­
pany ben­e­fited from an export credit scheme intro­duced in Costa
Rica as part of struc­tural adjust­ment pro­grammes which made
for­eign invest­ment more attrac­tive and favoured non-tra­di­tional
exports (Bard­ham et al., 1992; Clark, 1997). Pro­duc­tion was also
stim­u­lated by the US Carib­bean Basin Ini­tia­tive (CBI) that removed
3
Based on avail­able FAO-data, the share of Gha­na­ian fresh pine­ap­ple on the
EU mar­ket was about 7–9% in the late 1990s, drop­ping a little around the turn of
the cen­tury but increas­ing again to about 7% in 2002–2004. The share decreased
to about 5% in 2005 illus­trat­ing the down­ward slide of exports after the intro­duc­
tion of MD2. The fig­ures were cal­cu­lated on the basis of data (in vol­ume terms) on
Ghana’s export and EU’s import of fresh pine­ap­ple (see FAO Trade­STAT at http://fao­
stat.fao.org/site/535/default.aspx).
4
Del Monte’s growth is linked to pine­ap­ple pro­duc­tion. Accord­ing to a 2001
stock mar­ket report, 20% of com­pany rev­e­nue orig­i­nated from trade in pine­ap­ples,
while pine­ap­ples made up 56% of gross profit. The esti­mated mar­ket share for pine­
ap­ples is 42% (PCIR, 2001).
 N. Fold, K.V. Gough / Geoforum 39 (2008) 1687–1697 1689

800000

700000 CostaRica
Ecuador
600000 Honduras
Guatemal
500000
Mexico
Tonnes

400000

300000

200000

100000

1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
1983
1984
1985
1986
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993

2001
2002
2003
2004
Year
Fig. 1. Export (ton­nes) of fresh pine­ap­ples from major Latin Amer­i­can export­ers.

250000
Cote d'Ivoire
Ghana
200000

150000
Tonnes

100000

50000

0
86

87

88

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

97

98

99

00

01

02

03

04

05
19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

19

20

20

20

20

20

20

Year
Fig. 2. Export (ton­nes) of fresh pine­ap­ples from Ghana and Côte d’Ivo­ire.

many of the tar­iff bar­ri­ers for Cen­tral Amer­i­can exports (except
from Nic­a­ra­gua). In 1993, Fresh Del Monte Pro­duce obtained a
US pat­ent on a pine­ap­ple vari­ety named CO-2 (Lo­eil­let, 2003). A
year later, the com­pany obtained a pat­ent for the same vari­ety in
France, pre­sum­ably in order to block pro­duc­tion in Côte d’Ivo­ire
and mar­ket­ing in the EU by other com­pa­nies. Fresh Del Monte Pro­
duce sub­se­quently expanded its plan­ta­tion area in Costa Rica with
the new vari­ety, renamed MD2, and local large-scale farm­ers were
sub­con­tracted to do like­wise. As MD2 requires advanced cool­ing,
pack­ag­ing and trans­por­ta­tion tech­nol­ogy, the com­pany’s facil­i­ties
were upgraded and expanded. Through their con­trol of MD2, Fresh
Del Monte Pro­duce suc­ceeded in mo­nop­ol­is­ing the entire fresh
pine­ap­ple chain in Costa Rica, more or less keep­ing out local and
other for­eign com­pa­nies from all seg­ments of the chain (Stamm,
1995; Bard­ham et al., 1992). In 1996, the new vari­ety was mar­keted
in the US under the brand name ‘gold extra sweet’ result­ing in pine­
ap­ple exports from Costa Rica regain­ing momen­tum.
The Fresh Del Monte Pro­duce pat­ent on MD2 expired after a
decade enabling other major plan­ta­tion com­pa­nies, nota­bly Dole
Food Com­pany, to deal in MD2 from 2003. The result­ing mas­sive
increase in fresh pine­ap­ples from Costa Rica first hit the US mar­ket
but as that soon became sat­u­rated the EU was tar­geted. Mar­ket­ing
cam­paigns were car­ried out by the trans­na­tional com­pa­nies with
spe­cial week­long in-store stands offer­ing slice tast­ing backed up
by mas­sive adver­tis­ing in the media. The cam­paigns pro­moted the
taste, col­our, shape and size of MD2. The taste is sweeter and with­
out the some­what bit­ter bite which can char­ac­ter­ise Smooth Cay­
enne. MD2 is more golden in col­our and more rounded in shape,
yield­ing slices of approx­i­mately iden­ti­cal size. The smaller size
was pro­moted as being suit­able for a fam­ily meal remov­ing the
1690 N. Fold, K.V. Gough / Geoforum 39 (2008) 1687–1697
­prob­lem of how to store the left­overs in a fridge. Retail­ers were
also con­vinced of MD2’s supe­ri­or­ity due to its longer shelf-life
and eas­ier stor­abil­ity. Euro­pean con­sum­ers con­se­quently turned
their back on pine­ap­ples from West Africa and from being a niche
­prod­uct on the EU mar­ket, Smooth Cay­enne slipped to the bot­tom
of the price spec­trum of fresh pine­ap­ple. We now turn to exam­ine
how this chang­ing mar­ket for pine­ap­ples impacted on pine­ap­ple
farm­ers in Ghana.
3. Ghana’s pine­ap­ple pro­duc­tion: from small­hold­ers to
trans­na­tion­als
Exports of pine­ap­ple from Ghana started in the mid 1980s and
climbed steadily to about 10,000 ton­nes in the early 1990s (Fig.
2). They con­tin­ued to increase in the mid 1990s, though oscil­lated
dur­ing the lat­ter half of the decade. After the turn of the cen­tury,
exports increased rap­idly, fill­ing a vac­uum cre­ated by decreas­ing
exports from the civil war encum­bered Côte d’Ivo­ire, result­ing in a
vol­ume of about 50,000 ton­nes. In 2005, how­ever, exports started
to decrease and recent data indi­cates that EU imports of pine­ap­
ple from Ghana were down to about 38,000 ton­nes in 2007 (MIR,
2007).
Until recently, pine­ap­ple pro­duc­tion in Ghana was char­ac­ter­
ised by small­holder involve­ment in a non-tra­di­tional export chain
(Ta­kane, 2004). The small­hold­ers, how­ever, ran into prob­lems a few
years into the new mil­len­nium as com­pe­ti­tion from MD2 eroded
the demand for Smooth Cay­enne. Pro­duc­tion trans­ferred increas­
ingly into the hands of large com­mer­cial com­pa­nies who had the
cap­i­tal to invest in the nec­es­sary cool­ing and pack­ing facil­i­ties for
MD2 (see also Da­ni­e­lou and Rav­ry (2005)). In order to explore the
impact on small­hold­ers of the switch in demand from Smooth Cay­
enne to MD2, two set­tle­ments in con­trast­ing pine­ap­ple grow­ing
areas in Ghana were selected for in-depth study. The nature of
the set­tle­ments and the field­work con­ducted are out­lined below,
before anal­y­sing the impact of the chang­ing demand for pine­ap­
ples on each set­tle­ment in turn.
3.1. Set­ting the scene
Key to under­stand­ing set­tle­ment and farm­ing in Ghana is the
cus­tom­ary sys­tem of land ten­ure which is based on the belief that
‘Land belongs to a vast fam­ily of which many are dead, few are
living and count­less num­bers are still unborn’ (Oll­enu, 1962, 4).
The al­lo­dial rights to land are held by chiefs and elders, or fam­ily
heads, but any mem­ber of the stool has usu­fruct rights to the land
(Ka­san­ga and Ko­tey, 2001). In the past, chiefs granted rights to indi­
vid­u­als to use land on the basis of a ver­bal agree­ment but now these
trans­ac­tions have to be reg­is­tered (Gough and Yank­son, 2000). The
1969 con­sti­tu­tion removed the right to free­hold ten­ure but land
may be sold and held as lease­hold; the sale of stool land is man­
aged by the chiefs and elders or fam­ily heads. Despite attempts by
the state to inter­vene by leg­is­la­ture, most land mat­ters are still han­
dled by chiefs and elders in accor­dance with their inter­pre­ta­tion
of indig­e­nous land laws (Asen­so-Ok­yere et al., 1993). The rights of
mem­bers of the stool to land con­tinue as long as it is kept under
cul­ti­va­tion. Strang­ers can acquire access to land, if there is some
avail­able, through a range of means. A com­mon method in the pine­
5
A stool is the seat of a chief of an indig­e­nous state (some­times of a head of
fam­ily) which rep­re­sents the source of author­ity of the chief (or head of fam­ily).
Land owned by such a state is referred to as stool land. Some indi­vid­ual mem­bers of
stools have been given large tracts of land by chiefs which has led to a fam­ily land
sys­tem.
6
A stranger is a non-sub­ject of a clan, tribe, skin or stool hence the term strang­
ers is used to refer to migrants in the host com­mu­ni­ties (Ka­san­ga and Ko­tey, 2001).
In regards access to land, in­dig­enes and strang­ers are not on an equal foot­ing and
strang­ers do not have a com­mu­nal right to land.
ap­ple grow­ing areas is through the sys­tem of abusa whereby the
land­owner receives one third of the crop as pay­ment for the use
of the land. In sit­u­a­tions of land scar­city, stool mem­bers may also
expand their access to land through the abusa sys­tem (Al­has­san
and Manuh, 2005).
Pine­ap­ples are pre­dom­i­nantly grown in the south of Ghana in
the area where the East­ern, Cen­tral and Greater Ac­cra regions con­
verge. Pine­ap­ples were intro­duced into the Akwa­pim Hills in the
East­ern Region in the 1980s by small­hold­ers from the indig­e­nous
landholding groups. When the demand for exports rose dur­ing the
1990s, large-scale cul­ti­va­tors became inter­ested in enter­ing the
mar­ket but were unable to obtain large tracts of land in the Akwa­
pim Hills. They, there­fore, headed west and obtained lease­holds
for land in the Cen­tral Region and Greater Ac­cra Region where they
set up exten­sive com­mer­cial pine­ap­ple farms. In order to explore
the impact of the changes tak­ing place in pine­ap­ple cul­ti­va­tion,
we selected one set­tle­ment in the original Akwa­pim Hills pine­ap­
ple grow­ing area (Pok­rom Nsaba) and one in the newly expand­ing
area fur­ther west (Obom) (see Fig. 3). The cri­te­ria for selec­tion of
the spe­cific set­tle­ments were: located in a pine­ap­ple grow­ing area,
large pro­por­tion of the pop­u­la­tion involved in pine­ap­ple farm­ing,
and the larg­est set­tle­ment in their respec­tive areas.
Pok­rom Nsaba (here­af­ter referred to as Pok­rom) is located in
Akwa­pim South Dis­trict in the East­ern Region, approx­i­mately half­
way between the dis­trict cap­i­tal towns of Nsa­wam and Aburi. The
road to Nsa­wam has recently been paved and tro-tros (mini­bus­es)
ply the route fre­quently. Accord­ing to oral his­tory, the set­tle­ment
dates back to around 200 years ago when a road was first made
along the val­ley. The original inhab­it­ants grew basic food­stuffs,
later turn­ing to cocoa farm­ing. When the land could no longer sup­
port cocoa farm­ing, many of the inhab­it­ants migrated west and
became ten­ant cocoa farm­ers in the new cocoa fron­tier areas. Pine­
ap­ples started to be grown in Pok­rom in the early 1980s and by
the turn of the cen­tury most inhab­it­ants were engaged in pine­ap­
ple farm­ing in some way. The inhab­it­ants are pre­dom­i­nantly from
the indig­e­nous land-own­ing group (the Akwa­pim) and live in fam­
ily-based com­pound hous­ing. Many have invested in improv­ing
their homes enabling some to rent out rooms to migrant work­ers.
Accord­ing to the offi­cial Gov­ern­ment of Ghana cen­sus, 2181 people
lived in Pok­rom in 2000.
Obom is located in Ga Dis­trict in the Greater Ac­cra Region.
Despite being located close to Ac­cra, there is no elec­tric­ity in Obom
and all the roads lead­ing there are poorly main­tained dirt tracks. No
tro-tros serve Obom but a num­ber of shared taxis brave the roads.
Obom is set­tled pri­mar­ily by strang­ers who migrated from the east
and north of Ghana look­ing for land to cul­ti­vate. Accord­ing to the
chief and elders and women’s group, only about 15% of those living
in Obom are indig­e­nous Ga. Many of the strang­ers have been living
off the land for sev­eral gen­er­a­tions; their ances­tors were allowed
to set­tle and cul­ti­vate, as the land was not being used, with­out mak­
ing any for­mal pay­ment or receiv­ing any papers. They grew mainly
food crops both for con­sump­tion and for sale. Located on the main
Ac­cra-Tako­rad­i rail­way line, Obom was an impor­tant trad­ing post
until the rail­way line was closed in the late 1990s. Today, many of
the inhab­it­ants work in a nearby pine­ap­ple plan­ta­tion. Accord­ing
to the 2000 cen­sus, the pop­u­la­tion of Obom is 1179. The inhab­it­
ants live mainly in small com­pound houses with mud walls and
thatched roofs.
Field­work was con­ducted in sev­eral stages (Table 1). The semi-
struc­tured inter­views of the first stage were con­ducted with key
people in the set­tle­ments includ­ing local edu­ca­tion, health and
reli­gious lead­ers; we con­ducted these inter­views in English and
7
This pro­ject is one of ten which make up the major research programme ‘Rural–
urban dynam­ics in a glob­al­is­ing world’. A sim­i­lar three-stage meth­od­ol­ogy was
drawn up and fol­lowed by all programme mem­bers.
 N. Fold, K.V. Gough / Geoforum 39 (2008) 1687–1697 1691

0˚20 ' 0˚10 ' Aburi 0˚00 '

Pokrom

5˚50 ' Nsawam 5˚50 '

Akwapim South District

Tema District
Ga East
Obom District
Ga West
District
Amasaman

5˚40 ' 5˚40 '

Legon

Tema
Accra District

Accra

0 2 4 6 8 km

0 1 2 3 4 5 Miles

0˚20 ' 0˚10 ' 0˚00 '

G.A.M.A. Boundary District Capital Roads Water

District Boundary Other Towns, Villages A Study Settlements Built-up area 2002

Fig. 3. Loca­tion of study set­tle­ments.

took detailed notes. With the aid of a local research assis­tant, we
held focus group dis­cus­sions with groups of 8–10 people in a mix­
ture of English and local lan­guages. The dis­cus­sions were taped
and sub­se­quently tran­scribed. Top­ics cov­ered included the his­tory
of the set­tle­ment, chang­ing live­li­hoods, mobil­ity, and the cul­ti­va­
tion and sale of pine­ap­ples. Inter­views were also held with pine­
ap­ple busi­ness asso­ci­a­tions and gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions. This first
stage of field­work enabled us to obtain an over­view of the char­
ac­ter­is­tics of the set­tle­ments and the chang­ing live­li­hoods of the
inhab­it­ants, includ­ing pine­ap­ple pro­duc­tion. A ques­tion­naire sur­
vey was con­ducted in the sec­ond stage in order to exam­ine chang­
ing live­li­hoods, mobil­ity and expe­ri­ences of the pine­ap­ple trade
at the house­hold level. In the absence of a cen­sus sur­vey, which
would have enabled a true random sam­ple to be taken, houses
were selected at random. As the major­ity of the houses were inhab­
ited by multiple house­holds, more than one house­hold was often
inter­viewed to cover ten­ants as well as own­ers. The ques­tion­naires
were admin­is­tered by local assis­tants accom­pa­nied at times by the
authors. The data was sub­se­quently coded and entered into a data
base to facil­i­tate anal­y­sis. In the third stage, a return visit was made
to 10 house­holds in each set­tle­ment. All of the house­holds were, or
had been, involved in work­ing with pine­ap­ples and were selected
to cover a range of house­hold types and expe­ri­ences. The in-depth
inter­views traced the respon­dents’ life his­to­ries focus­sing on their
expe­ri­ences as pine­ap­ple farm­ers/work­ers. Inter­views were also
held with large-scale pine­ap­ple grow­ers, pro­ces­sors, export­ers,
insti­tu­tions and aca­dem­ics to find out the latest devel­op­ments in
the pine­ap­ple sec­tor.
By adopt­ing dif­fer­ent research meth­ods we were able to ask a
range of respon­dents about sim­i­lar issues, which should improve
the valid­ity of the find­ings. The remain­der of this paper builds
upon the field­work out­lined above and con­tains some data from
all of the dif­fer­ent meth­ods used. First, the chang­ing for­tunes of
small­hold­ers in Pok­rom and Obom, and how these are linked to
the GVC for pine­ap­ples, are pre­sented. The focus then turns to the
pres­ent day and the attempts made by pine­ap­ple grow­ers to find
new niches in the global and local mar­kets.
3.2. Pok­rom: small­hold­ers gain and lose a share in the mar­ket
‘If you are born here you will be a pine­ap­ple farmer’. These were
the words of the chief of Pok­rom in 2005. At that time, Pok­rom
1692 N. Fold, K.V. Gough / Geoforum 39 (2008) 1687–1697
Table 1
Sum­mary of field­work
Tim­ing of field­work Field­work meth­ods
Stage 1: April 2005 Selec­tion of two study Semi-struc­tured inter­views
set­tle­ments with local lead­ers
Stage 2: Jan­u­ary/Feb­ru­ary Ques­tion­naire sur­vey with 75 house­holds in each set­tle­ment (150 in total)
2006
Stage 3: Jan­u­ary/Feb­ru­ary In-depth inter­views with 10 house­holds
and Sep­tem­ber 2007 in each set­tle­ment (20 in total)
was a hive of activ­ity with farm­ers and work­ers on their way to
or from their fields, trucks piled high with pine­ap­ples were con­
stantly pass­ing by, work­ers were busy in a pack­ing shed located
on the road­side, and as far as the eye could see there were pine­ap­
ple fields. The trans­for­ma­tion two years later was dra­matic. Many
of the pine­ap­ple fields had been aban­doned and were overgrown,
the pack­ing shed had been closed, young men were sit­ting around
with noth­ing to do, and although the occa­sional truck loaded with
pine­ap­ples passed by there was noth­ing like the traf­fic of a cou­
ple of years ear­lier. Pok­rom had gone from a boom­ing set­tle­ment,
which indig­e­nous people returned to in order to farm pine­ap­ples
and where migrants came look­ing for farm work, to a stag­nat­ing
set­tle­ment where the migrants had moved on and the local youth
planned ways of get­ting out of their home­town. How did this trans­
for­ma­tion come about and what were the expe­ri­ences of the pine­
ap­ple farm­ers?
Indig­e­nous small­hold­ers started to grow the Smooth Cay­enne
vari­ety of pine­ap­ples in Pok­rom in the early 1980s. Ini­tially they
were sold on the local mar­ket but export­ers soon started show­ing
an inter­est. The amount of land under pine­ap­ples sub­se­quently
increased and the grow­ing meth­ods changed with an increased
use of fer­til­is­er and pes­ti­cide to increase the yield per hect­are.
Some of the inhab­it­ants started becom­ing rel­a­tively wealthy from
cul­ti­vat­ing pine­ap­ples and the word spread result­ing in many of
those who had left Pok­rom, either to cul­ti­vate cocoa fur­ther west
in Ghana or to work in Nige­ria, return­ing to Pok­rom to start pine­
ap­ple farm­ing. The num­ber of pine­ap­ple farm­ers increased slowly
at first but then accel­er­ated in the late 1990s. As Table 2 shows,
almost half of those inter­viewed began after the start of the new
mil­len­nium. In 2006, 83% of the house­holds inter­viewed were
engaged in pine­ap­ple farm­ing in some way and it formed the main
source of income for over half (56%). Almost all (97%) had a sec­ond
source of income and for 22% of these it was pine­ap­ple farm­ing.
This shows how pine­ap­ple farm­ing was an impor­tant source of
income for almost all house­holds living in Pok­rom.
One third of the pine­ap­ple farm­ers in Pok­rom were cul­ti­vat­ing
land under the abusa sys­tem. Many of the farms were very small;
a third were less than one hect­are, 60% were 2 hect­ares or less and
only 11% were larger than 20 hect­ares (Table 3). Even the larger
farms started small; the larg­est farm of 210 hect­ares started in
Table 2
Year in which farm­ers in Pok­rom started to grow pine­ap­ples
Year started Num­ber of farm­ers (%)
1980–1989 5 Ghana. Com­plaints from small­hold­ers in Pok­rom about not receiv­
1990–1994 18
1996–1999 30
2000–2005 47
Sam­ple size 62
Source: Ques­tion­naire sur­vey.
Focus group dis­cus­sions with chiefs Inter­views with pine­ap­ple
and elders, women’s and youth busi­ness asso­ci­a­tions and
groups (six in total) gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions
Focus group dis­cus­sions with local Inter­views with large-scale pine­ap­ple grow­
asso­ci­a­tions of pine­ap­ple grow­ers ers, pro­ces­sors, export­ers, insti­tu­tions,
aca­dem­ics, etc.
Table 3
Area of land used by pine­ap­ple farm­ers in Pok­rom
Area of land (hect­are) Num­ber of farm­ers (%)
Under 0.5 4
0.5–0.9 28
1–2 28
3–4 10
5–8 10
9–20 8
21–40 10
Over 40 1
Sam­ple size 62
Source: Ques­tion­naire sur­vey.
1988 with just a tenth of a hect­are and has grad­u­ally expanded
over the years. None of the farm­ers were them­selves involved in
export­ing. Whilst there was a demand for Smooth Cay­enne, the
small­hold­ers were approached by export­ers, often via inter­me­di­ar­
ies. The export­ers checked the small­hold­ers’ fields to esti­mate the
vol­ume of poten­tially har­vest­able pine­ap­ples in order to sat­isfy a
spe­cific order from an EU importer. After agree­ing on a price, the
exporter would orga­nise a group of work­ers to ‘de-green’ (i.e. treat
with a chem­i­cal sub­stance) the selected pine­ap­ples a week before
being har­vested. On har­vest­ing day, the pine­ap­ples were cleaned,
graded (into dif­fer­ent sizes) and pack­aged in card­board boxes,
some­times together with pine­ap­ples from the exporter’s own plan­
ta­tions. All of the pine­ap­ples were trucked on the same day to the
air­port or to the har­bour in Tema in order to min­i­mise dam­age
to the fruit. Some of the larger small­hold­ers were used on a con­
tin­u­ous basis to add to sup­plies from the exporter’s own plan­ta­
tion. Although there was no for­mal writ­ten con­tract, the exporter
would often order pine­ap­ples on a reg­u­lar basis to main­tain the
small­holder within the ranks of their sub-sup­pli­ers. Occa­sion­ally,
reli­able small­hold­ers were sup­plied with inputs, such as fer­til­izer
and pes­ti­cides, on credit.
The link between the export­ers and the small­hold­ers remained
ten­u­ous though. The export­ers claimed that they could not rely on
the small­hold­ers to deliver the pine­ap­ples whilst the small­hold­ers
com­plained bit­terly that the export­ers did not always col­lect the
pine­ap­ples as agreed and often delayed pay­ment. The export­ers
main­tained that as they were paid with a con­sid­er­able time-lag
after ship­ment, their pay­ments to small­hold­ers were inev­i­ta­bly
delayed. The small­hold­ers had no way of check­ing either the actual
price paid in Europe or the net sum trans­ferred to the export­ers in
ing any pay­ments for pine­ap­ples sup­plied were wide­spread, espe­
cially after the demand for Smooth Cay­enne started to fall. Many of
the farm­ers could pro­duce invoices of up to sev­eral mil­lion ce­dis
8
There were approx­i­mately 10,000 ce­dis to the dol­lar at the time.
 N. Fold, K.V. Gough / Geoforum 39 (2008) 1687–1697
for pine­ap­ples which had been col­lected by export­ers up to two
years pre­vi­ously but for which they had not yet been paid. The
chief and elders explained how:
‘The export­ers are mak­ing the farm­ers poorer and poorer
because the pine­ap­ples are har­vested yearly. If by the end
of the year you don’t get your money back it means that you
can­not con­tinue. The exporter says ‘I will pay you’. Later he
tells you that his returns have not come from Europe. … At
times, after har­vest­ing the fruits they come and tell you that
the fruits were delayed and got spoilt so they will only give
you half of the money. Even the half money will be paid
to you in instal­ments. Whether it is true or not, you don’t
know’.
The out­stand­ing pay­ments for pine­ap­ples have caused many of
the small­hold­ers to lose their cap­i­tal pre­vent­ing them from being
able to afford the nec­es­sary inputs to con­tinue farm­ing. The farm­
ers have also been dis­heart­ened as Smooth Cay­enne is no longer
demanded on the export mar­ket. Smooth Cay­enne can, how­ever,
still be sold to pine­ap­ple pro­ces­sors, mainly small- and medium-
scale com­pa­nies pro­duc­ing juice for the local mar­ket, and local mar­
ket women. There is a con­sid­er­able price dif­fer­ence, though, with
an exporter typ­i­cally pay­ing twice as much as a pro­ces­sor who in
turn pays twice as much as a mar­ket woman. An impor­tant pro­ces­
sor in the region is Blue Skies, a for­eign-owned com­pany that pro­
duces sliced fresh fruit for the EU mar­ket. Many of the farm­ers who
were still grow­ing pine­ap­ples in 2007 were the larger farms who
had a reg­u­lar order from Blue Skies (see below). The loss of cap­i­tal
is also pre­vent­ing many of the small­hold­ers from turn­ing to grow
alter­na­tive crops or set up new busi­nesses. Even for those who
still have some cap­i­tal, switch­ing to grow­ing MD2 is not an option
because the invest­ment needed in cool­ing and pack­ing facil­i­ties is
beyond their means, and because the price of suck­ers is so high.
Con­se­quently, MD2 is pre­dom­i­nantly being grown by large-scale
trans­na­tional com­pa­nies located fur­ther west as shown below in
the case of Obom.
3.3. Obom: trans­na­tional com­pa­nies enter the scene
Trav­el­ling along the unpaved road to Obom, you know you
are nearly there when you start spot­ting yel­low bicy­cles. These
belong to the work­ers of Golden Ex­ot­ics, a large-scale pine­ap­ple
farm located on the out­skirts of the set­tle­ment, which bought the
bicy­cles to facil­i­tate the trans­port of work­ers to the farm. Many
fam­i­lies living in Obom now have at least one mem­ber work­ing
at Golden Ex­ot­ics, who with their 500 work­ers are an impor­tant
employer for the area. Most of the inhab­it­ants used to grow food
crops though some switched to grow­ing pine­ap­ples in the early
years of the new mil­len­nium. Ini­tially they made rea­son­able prof­
its but many entered the mar­ket just as the demand fell and they
lost con­sid­er­able amounts of money. In 2006, 21 of the 75 house­
holds inter­viewed were still grow­ing pine­ap­ples but a fur­ther 14
house­holds had already stopped. Pine­ap­ple farm­ing was recorded
as being the most impor­tant source of income for only 15% of
house­holds with a fur­ther 6% nam­ing it as their most impor­tant
sec­ond­ary source of income. Crop farm­ing was the most impor­tant
source of income over­all (for 35% of house­holds) with a fur­ther
24% nam­ing unskilled work, includ­ing casual work, as their most
impor­tant income source.
Sev­eral large-scale pine­ap­ple farms were estab­lished in the
area dur­ing the 1990s, attracted by the prox­im­ity to the har­bour at
Tema and the abun­dance of land. With the major­ity of small-scale
farm­ers being strang­ers, with no legal right to the land, the chief
9
In Feb­ru­ary 2007, one MD2 sucker cost 3000 ce­dis but the kilo price obtained
for a fully grown pine­ap­ple was only 1700 ce­dis.
1693
and elders were able to sell lease­holds for large areas of land to the
large-scale farm­ers. Ini­tially they cul­ti­vated Smooth Cay­enne but
as the demand shifted to MD2 they turned to cul­ti­vat­ing the lat­ter.
Some started replant­ing as soon as they saw the need, whereas
oth­ers waited for gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies to pur­chase the suck­ers. In
2004, a grant of US$ 2 mil­lion from the World Bank financed Agri­
cul­tural Sub-Sec­tor Ser­vices Invest­ment Programme (AgS­SIP) was
allo­cated to the Ghana Export Pro­mo­tion Coun­cil for dis­tri­bu­tion
among large-scale farm­ers who applied for finan­cial sup­port to
buy and plant MD2. New com­pa­nies, pri­mar­ily with for­eign cap­i­tal
includ­ing Ger­man, French and Ital­ian, entered the scene set­ting up
large-scale plan­ta­tions grow­ing exclu­sively MD2. Cul­ti­vat­ing MD2
requires major invest­ment in new tech­nol­ogy as the pine­ap­ples
need to go straight from the har­vested field through a well-organ­
ised cool­ing chain that stretches from the plan­ta­tion pack house
to the port.
Golden Ex­ot­ics is one of the more recent com­pa­nies to enter
the scene. It is owned by Com­pag­nie Front­ière, a French com­pany
in which Dole has a 30% share. Since being estab­lished in 2003,
the area of land under cul­ti­va­tion has increased pro­gres­sively to
1000 hect­ares. The fore­cast for 2007 is 16–17,000 ton­nes of pine­
ap­ples increas­ing to 20,000 ton­nes in 2008 and even­tu­ally expand­
ing to 40,000 ton­nes depend­ing on the EU mar­ket. When Golden
Ex­ot­ics was estab­lished in 2003, MD2 was sell­ing for 12 Eu­ros per
box in Europe whereas the fore­cast for 2007 is only 6.7 Eu­ros per
box result­ing in the com­pany claim­ing to oper­ate on a tight profit
mar­gin. One way in which trans­na­tional com­pa­nies, like Golden
Ex­ot­ics, try to increase their profit is by con­trol­ling every stage of
the pro­cess from grow­ing pine­ap­ples to deliv­er­ing them to the
super­mar­kets. Com­pag­nie Front­ière also owns the ship­ping com­
pany Africa Express Line (AEL) which spec­i­a­lis­es in ship­ping fruit
from West Africa to Europe. In fact, the incen­tive for Com­pag­nie
Front­ière to set up Golden Ex­ot­ics was to increase the sup­ply of
pine­ap­ples from Ghana thus mak­ing the ship­ping route more prof­
it­able. Until the mid 1990s, most fresh pine­ap­ple was trans­ported
to the EU by air using the sur­plus capac­ity of an air freight com­
pany that stopped for fuel in Ac­cra on its way back from trans­port­
ing goods from the EU to Bra­zil. In the mid-1990s, how­ever, three
large-scale export­ers started the Sea-freight Pine­ap­ple Export­ers
of Ghana (SPEG) with finan­cial sup­port from USAid. SPEG organ­
ised two weekly depar­tures from Tema har­bour with AEL result­ing
in sea trans­port replac­ing trans­port by air. In 2004, SPEG shipped
about 48,000 ton­nes cor­re­spond­ing to roughly 85% of total exports.
Exports by sea have sub­se­quently dropped sub­stan­tially to about
45,000 ton­nes in 2005 and 36,000 ton­nes in 2006, reflect­ing the
reduced demand for Smooth Cay­enne in the EU.
SPEG pro­vides ship­ping ser­vices pri­mar­ily to its 27 mem­ber
com­pa­nies but oth­ers can pur­chase space if there is sur­plus capac­
ity. The mem­bers are all export­ers engaged in con­sid­er­able, albeit
highly var­ied, vol­umes of pro­duc­tion. Mem­bers have to pro­duce at
least 10 hect­ares and export a min­i­mum of 400 ton­nes but about
a third of the mem­bers cul­ti­vate more than 200 hect­ares. Mem­
bers with sunk costs in plan­ta­tion invest­ments are con­sid­ered to
be com­mit­ted to the pine­ap­ple chain and, there­fore, sta­ble stake­
hold­ers in the sec­tor. By secur­ing sup­plies on a reg­u­lar basis and
avoid­ing ‘free rid­ers’ who could destroy Ghana’s rep­u­ta­tion by
oppor­tu­nis­tic behav­iour, the cred­i­bil­ity of the Gha­na­ian pine­ap­ple
sec­tor is being main­tained. Mem­bers are required to use a cer­tain
qual­ity of pack­ag­ing car­tons and have access to an accepted pack-
house for clean­ing, grad­ing, and pack­ing before the pine­ap­ples
are trucked to Tema har­bour. SPEG reg­u­lates the indus­try through
its con­trol of access to the ves­sels10. Its strong domes­tic position,
10
Pine­ap­ple com­pa­nies have to meet Ghana Stan­dard Board SPS (i.e. san­i­tary and
phy­to­san­i­tary) require­ments. Such SPS mea­sures are WTO require­ments for inter­na­
tional trade.
1694 N. Fold, K.V. Gough / Geoforum 39 (2008) 1687–1697
­ ow­ever, ­ con­trasts sharply with its position in the EU mar­ket.
h been estab­lished in the area. Recently, how­ever, there have been
Some large com­pa­nies, such as Golden Ex­ot­ics, have direct con­tact
with super­mar­kets and are able to sell at agreed fixed prices. Most
of the export­ers, how­ever, sell on con­sign­ment, i.e. agents check
the pine­ap­ples at the point of entry and hand over the invoices
to around 30 Euro­pean whole­sale com­pa­nies who buy pine­ap­
ples from Ghana. These whole­sal­ers in turn act as com­mis­sion­ing
agents and sell the pine­ap­ples to retail­ers. Usu­ally 8–10% of the
sales value is deducted as pay­ment for this ser­vice and added to
other costs such as road trans­port and paper­work. The remain­ing
sum is reim­bursed to the export­ers (TAC, 2004). This results in
all the risk being car­ried by the export­ers in Ghana and there are
fre­quent cases of fraud alle­ga­tions by export­ers on the practice of
agents and whole­sal­ers.
So how has the arrival of the large-scale farms and their tightly
linked net­works affected the live­li­hoods of the inhab­it­ants of
Obom? As many of the res­i­dents are strang­ers with­out for­mal
rights to the land they farm, land which has been in their fam­i­lies
for gen­er­a­tions is being leased to large-scale pine­ap­ple export­ers
with­out any form of com­pen­sa­tion. Not only are they los­ing their
live­li­hoods, but in some cases are also los­ing their homes where
small set­tle­ments located in the mid­dle of new plan­ta­tions are
removed. Although some can find employ­ment as labour­ers on
the pine­ap­ple farms, many of those inter­viewed con­sid­ered this
to be the last option as the work is hard and the hours long. Con­
se­quently, some inhab­it­ants are mov­ing away in search of land
to farm else­where and oth­ers are strug­gling to find alter­na­tive
sources of income, ham­pered by the lack of elec­tric­ity. When
asked whether the large-scale farms have brought positive or neg­
a­tive devel­op­ment, a par­tic­i­pant in a focus group dis­cus­sion with
young men replied emphat­i­cally:
‘It is neg­a­tive because they have taken our land from us.
They employ us but are exploit­ing us because their pay is
insuf­fi­cient. Most people, the land that has been taken away
from them it was their great grand­fa­ther who gave it to their
grand­fa­ther and their father who has given it to them. Some
of them don’t even know their grand­fa­ther who first set­tled
here and now they have come to take the whole land’.
The small­hold­ers who still have access to land, pre­dom­i­nantly
the indig­e­nous inhab­it­ants, have found that, as in Pok­rom, they
can no longer sell their pine­ap­ples to export­ers since the demand
switched to MD2. Even if they could afford to switch to MD2, they
would be unlikely to be able to sup­ply the export­ers. As the man­
ager of Golden Ex­ot­ics explained, he could not pur­chase from small­
hold­ers as it is imper­a­tive that the pine­ap­ples reach the cool­ing
room soon after har­vest­ing. Golden Ex­ot­ics has a highly effi­cient
sys­tem of har­vest­ing, trans­port­ing to the pack­ing house, wash­ing,
wax­ing, grad­ing and pack­ing of their pine­ap­ples. Con­se­quently,
the pine­ap­ples are in the cool­ing room between one and a half and
three hours after har­vest­ing. Speed is of the essence as for every
hour delayed get­ting the pine­ap­ples into the cool­ing room, the
shelf-life in Europe is short­ened by a day.
4. Small­hold­ers’ cur­rent position in the Gha­na­ian pine­ap­ple
chain
As the accounts from Pok­rom and Obom have shown, small­hold­
ers have lost their position in the pine­ap­ple chain from Ghana to the
EU. From being vital sup­pli­ers to export­ers, they have found that
the Smooth Cay­enne vari­ety they grow is no longer demanded for
export. Some farm­ers in Pok­rom are still grow­ing Smooth ­Cay­enne,
whereas many in both Pok­rom and Obom have stopped cul­ti­vat­ing
pine­ap­ples hav­ing lost their cap­i­tal as well as their mar­ket. Whilst
farm­ers in Pok­rom still have access to land, many in Obom have
lost theirs to the pine­ap­ple trans­na­tional com­pa­nies who have
a num­ber of restruc­tur­ing efforts in the pine­ap­ple sec­tor in Ghana
includ­ing new ways of incor­po­rat­ing small­hold­ers as pro­duc­ers of
niche prod­ucts. Below, we outline var­i­ous efforts to find new ave­
nues to the poten­tially lucra­tive mar­kets in the EU via prod­uct dif­
fer­en­ti­a­tion (Fig. 4).
4.1. Fair trade niche: the fail­ure of Farma­pine
In 1999, five vil­lage coop­er­a­tives in the Akwa­pim Range linked
up with two grower/export­ers to estab­lish Farma­pine. The aim was
to estab­lish a farmer-based pro­ducer and mar­ket­ing orga­ni­sa­tion
to expand exports and con­sol­i­date small­holder par­tic­i­pa­tion. The
small­hold­ers had on aver­age half a hect­are of pine­ap­ples. Coop­er­a­
tive mem­bers were trained in cul­ti­va­tion prac­tices and those work­
ing in the com­pany offi­cers were trained in pur­chase pro­ce­dures
and logis­tics. Farma­pine was funded by the World Bank with tech­
ni­cal sup­port from the US based NGO Tech­no­Serve and suc­ceeded
in gain­ing Eu­rep­GAP cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. In the early stages when donor
funds were flow­ing, Farma­pine assisted the farm­ers with inputs,
such as seed­lings, fer­til­izer and pes­ti­cides, on credit. The mar­ket­
ing divi­sion organ­ised pro­duc­tion and har­vest­ing plans for each
farmer, picked up the pine­ap­ples from the farms and trans­ported
them to the orga­ni­sa­tion’s premises on the out­skirts of Nsa­wam.
Here pine­ap­ples were graded and packed before being taken to
Tema where Farma­pine, as a mem­ber of SPEG, used the bi-weekly
ship­ments with AEL. In the early years, Farma­pine was con­sid­ered
a great suc­cess. Around 300 small­hold­ers were involved and they
were the sec­ond larg­est exporter in Ghana with about a 20% share
of total exports. Grad­u­ally, how­ever, prob­lems piled up as exter­
nal finance and tech­ni­cal assis­tance were phased out. Farma­pine
over-invested in office build­ings, a shed (for grad­ing and pack­ing)
and trucks, even using up their work­ing cap­i­tal. Input sup­plies to
the coop­er­a­tive mem­bers stopped and pay­ments for pine­ap­ples
col­lected were delayed. The small­hold­ers in Pok­rom com­plained
bit­terly about Farma­pine and many started sell­ing to other export­
ers thereby dis­rupt­ing Farma­pine’s busi­ness plans.
A pos­si­ble solu­tion to the prob­lems fac­ing the small­holder
based orga­ni­sa­tion seemed to be to insert their prod­ucts into the
fair trade mar­ket. Exports of fair trade prod­ucts are par­tic­u­larly
valu­able in the low sea­son (from May to Sep­tem­ber) because fair
trade is not as sea­sonal as the ordinary mar­ket which depends on
the weather and tim­ing of cer­tain cel­e­bra­tions. In 2004, Farma­pine
obtained fair trade cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and fair trade exports started in
2005 to Te­sco in the UK via Com­pag­nie Fruit­i­ère. The export vol­
ume was mod­est but there were plans to sell about 50% of the
pine­ap­ples (around 5000 ton­nes) as fair trade prod­ucts. In late
2007, how­ever, Farma­pine had ceased oper­at­ing and faced legal
pro­ceed­ings due to unre­deemed debt. Mean­while, ini­tia­tives were
under­way by large-scale com­pa­nies which have been cer­ti­fied as
fair trade pro­ducer or­gan­i­sa­tions by the Fair­trade Label­ling Orga­ni­
sa­tion Inter­na­tional. The Ital­ian com­pany Mi­lan­i Ltd. has set up a
scheme whereby an agreed pro­por­tion of the fair trade premium
price of pine­ap­ples sold in the Global North is invested in local com­
mu­ni­ties in the form of var­i­ous ser­vice facil­i­ties such as schools,
potable water and elec­tric­ity. Besides enjoy­ing the rel­a­tive ­sta­bil­ity
of higher mar­ket prices, Mi­lan­i is able to sup­port the local com­mu­
ni­ties on which the com­pany relies for labour on its 1000 hect­are
pine­ap­ple farm11.
4.2. Ready-to-eat food niche: the slic­ing and chill­ing busi­ness
In the late 1990s, the UK owned com­pany Blue Skies started
export­ing freshly cut and vac­uum packed slices of pine­ap­ple from
11
For fur­ther details see http://www.ag­ri­food­stan­dards.net/en/node/422/print.
 N. Fold, K.V. Gough / Geoforum 39 (2008) 1687–1697 1695

Smallholders Large farms/exporters

Local Traders

Ghana
Processors (juice)

Processors (R2E)
R2E: “Ready to Eat”

Consumers

Wholesalers

Greengrocers Supermarket Chains

EU
Consumers

Smooth Cayenne Organic Processed Products

MD 2 Fair Trade Various Products

Fig. 4. Pine­ap­ple flows from Ghana to the EU.

a new fac­tory near Nsa­wam. The loca­tion is ideal for a pro­cess­ing
facil­ity as it is located close to the pine­ap­ple grow­ers on the main
road lead­ing to Ac­cra. The high-value prod­ucts are trans­ported
daily by air to super­mar­kets in Europe, pri­mar­ily the UK. Blue Skies
has a well-estab­lished name in the UK, sup­ply­ing Sains­bury’s,
Marks and Spencer, Som­er­fields and Bud­gens with straight and
mixed ready-to-eat pack­ets of trop­i­cal fruit.
Blue Skies uses pri­mar­ily Smooth Cay­enne pine­ap­ples sourced
from 28 selected and trained farm­ers located mainly in the Akwa­
pim Range. The farm­ers have the sta­tus of for­mal outg­row­ers and
have been trained in pro­duc­tion prac­tices accord­ing to Eu­rep­GAP12.
They must have a min­i­mum of 4 hect­ares under cul­ti­va­tion, with
most hav­ing con­sid­er­ably more, in order to sup­ply at least 2000
pine­ap­ples every week. Despite the sav­ings which result from
more effi­cient use of agro-chem­i­cals being more or less bal­anced
out by the costs of required facil­i­ties (such as toi­lets, baths and shel­
ters for farm labour­ers, and stor­age rooms for chem­i­cals) farm­ers
are keen to join the outg­row­er scheme (Go­goe in Dan­kers, 2003).
The prices are rel­a­tively high, pay­ments are reg­u­lar, and the intro­
duc­tory train­ing pro­grammes enable the farm­ers to qual­ify for cer­
ti­fi­ca­tion. As the case of Pok­rom illus­trated, although the num­ber
of farm­ers cul­ti­vat­ing pine­ap­ples has declined in the Akwa­pim
Range, many of the farm­ers who are sur­viv­ing, and even expand­
ing, are those who reg­u­larly sup­ply Blue Skies.
When the demand for pine­ap­ples in Europe switched to MD2,
Blue Skies became con­cerned about main­tain­ing its sup­ply as
the small­hold­ers only grow Smooth Cay­enne. Con­se­quently they
­estab­lished their own farm where they grew MD2. Iron­i­cally, they
12
Blue Skies was one of the first com­pa­nies in Africa to enter Eu­rep­GAP.
dis­cov­ered that their cus­tom­ers pre­ferred the Smooth Cay­enne
vari­ety when pro­vided in the ready-cut form and are clos­ing down
their MD2 farm. This illus­trates how fickle the Euro­pean taste, and
hence the demand for trop­i­cal fruit, can be.
4.3. Organic niche: the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of sugar loaf
Before exports of pine­ap­ples to the EU started, pine­ap­ple pro­
duc­tion in Ghana was mainly of another vari­ety named Sugar Loaf.
Com­pared to Smooth Cay­enne it is greener, longer and almost
cone-shaped with pale-whit­ish flesh. Sugar Loaf was not exported
until recently as whole­sal­ers in Europe did not con­sider it to be
sale­able in Europe due to its shape, col­our and eas­ier bruis­ing; as
the Gha­na­ian small­hold­ers said, ‘Euro­pe­ans eat with their eyes’.
The Sugar Loaf vari­ety has main­tained its pop­u­lar­ity in Ghana. It
is grown pri­mar­ily in the Cen­tral Region, outside the major pine­ap­
ple belt, and is sold in local mar­kets and along road­sides. Recently
Sugar Loaf has under­gone a dra­matic re-eval­u­a­tion by export­ers
to the UK. Joint efforts by donors (USAid), retail­ers (Ahold and
Albert Hein) and research insti­tu­tions in the Neth­er­lands and the
US have resulted in the estab­lish­ment of an organ­i­sa­tional struc­
ture for the pro­cessed, high-value organic pine­ap­ple. Sugar Loaf
is now sold by the upmar­ket UK super­mar­ket chain Wait­rose as
organic pro­cessed pine­ap­ple chunks that are adver­tised as being
air­lifted ‘direct from the Afri­can hill­tops to UK stores within hours
of being picked by Fanti tribes­men in Ghana’. The ‘Fanti tribes­men’
are about 80 farm­ers from four set­tle­ments in the Cen­tral Region
organ­ised into a Pro­duce Mar­ket­ing Orga­ni­sa­tion (the Blue Skies
Organic Col­lec­tive). The orga­ni­sa­tion is cer­ti­fied through Blue Skies
in accor­dance with stan­dards of the Soil Asso­ci­a­tion, Fair­trade
1696 N. Fold, K.V. Gough / Geoforum 39 (2008) 1687–1697
and Eu­rep­GAP. Due to its pre­vi­ous infe­rior sta­tus, Sugar Loaf has
tra­di­tion­ally been cul­ti­vated with­out costly fer­til­izer and har­vest­
ing takes place when the pine­ap­ple is nat­u­rally ripe. The value-
added pro­cess­ing takes place at the Blue Skies fac­tory where the
pine­ap­ples are peeled, sliced, pack­aged in 250 g plas­tic tubs and
chilled before being trans­ported to the air­port. The pine­ap­ples are
on the shelves of UK super­mar­kets within 24 hours of being har­
vested13. This niche is cur­rently under threat though, as the UK
Soils Asso­ci­a­tion is con­sid­er­ing no longer clas­si­fy­ing air freigh­ted
FFV as organic. In 2007, Blue Skies had man­aged to nego­ti­ate to con­
tinue to sup­ply Sugar Loaf to Wait­rose though they were dubi­ous
that the order would con­tinue in subsequent years. This illus­trates
the vol­a­tile nature of export mar­kets.
4.4. Pro­mo­tion of MD2: includ­ing small­hold­ers in the chain
Another way of sup­port­ing small­hold­ers is to try to include
them in MD2 pine­ap­ple exports to the EU. A USAid programme
enti­tled ‘Trade and Invest­ment Pro­gram for a Com­pet­i­tive Export
Econ­omy’ (TIP­CEE) has set up a pro­ject that aims to help small­
hold­ers become more effi­cient and mar­ket ori­ented. The pro­ject
was started in 2005 and is man­aged by three US based NGOs:
Care Inter­na­tional, Tech­no­Serve Ghana and Amer­i­can Expe­ri­ence
(AMEX). By assist­ing the farm­ers in form­ing pro­ducer mar­ket­ing
or­gan­i­sa­tions (PMO) and train­ing them on qual­ity require­ments
and stan­dards, the pro­ject aims to enable the PMOs to obtain
Eu­rep­GAP cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and thereby par­tic­i­pate in the sup­ply
chains feed­ing into Euro­pean retail­ers. The pro­ject tar­gets small­
hold­ers in areas where the pro­duc­tion of non-tra­di­tional agri­cul­
tural prod­ucts, such as var­i­ous fruits (includ­ing pine­ap­ple), veg­
e­ta­bles and cashew nuts, takes place. In addi­tion to cul­ti­va­tion
prac­tices, farm­ers in PMOs are also trained in keep­ing finan­cial
records in order to inter­act with rural banks. They need, how­
ever, to reg­is­ter with the author­i­ties as for­mal farm­ers’ asso­ci­a­
tions or coop­er­a­tives before they can become legal enti­ties eli­gi­
ble for loans from for­mal finan­cial insti­tu­tions. Besides train­ing,
the programme includes dig­i­tal map­ping and estab­lish­ment of
GIS-dat­abases for imple­men­ta­tion of trace­abil­ity sys­tems linked
to small­holder pro­duc­tion (Fa­along et al., 2006).
As of April 2007, about four mil­lion MD2 plant­lets had been dis­
trib­uted to a total of 65 farmer groups (includ­ing ones in Pok­rom
and Obom) who are devel­op­ing mul­ti­pli­ca­tion nurs­er­ies; these
activ­i­ties have been financed by part of the World Bank’s AgS­SIP
scheme via TIP­CEE. Each plant­let should yield six suck­ers which
will then be trans­planted into the small­hold­ers’ fields. As the pro­
ject pro­gresses, more fields will be planted and the first har­vests
are expected to take place in early 2008. The PMOs should then be
capa­ble of han­dling MD2 cul­ti­va­tion and enter­ing into con­tracts
with export­ers organ­ised within SPEG. The main chal­lenges fac­ing
TIP­CEE, before the programme ends in 2009, are to train PMOs
to under­stand the con­trac­tual require­ments and link them with
export­ers to estab­lish long-term rela­tion­ships that match super­
mar­kets’ time plan­ning hori­zons of 2–3 years.
5. Con­clu­sion
This paper has shown how a thriving small­holder based pine­
ap­ple sec­tor in Ghana was grad­u­ally eroded by com­pet­i­tive strat­
e­gies of trans­na­tional com­pa­nies with global activ­i­ties in pro­duc­
tion, pro­cess­ing and export of trop­i­cal fruits. The devel­op­ment
and brand­ing of a new pine­ap­ple vari­ety, MD2, in Costa Rica
resulted in the rapid expan­sion of exports to the US and sub­se­
13
Blue Skies also exports to Albert Hein, a Dutch super­mar­ket chain owned by
Ahold, one of the larg­est retail­ers in the Neth­er­lands with substantial assets in the
US.
quently the EU. Fol­low­ing aggres­sive mar­ket­ing cam­paigns, con­
sumer pref­er­ence switched from the Smooth Cay­enne vari­ety to
MD2. This has dec­i­mated the demand for Smooth Cay­enne grown
by small­hold­ers in Ghana result­ing in the Gha­na­ian pine­ap­ple
sec­tor being com­pletely restruc­tured. Large-scale pine­ap­ple
farms, prin­ci­pally run by trans­na­tion­als, are now grow­ing large
quan­ti­ties of MD2 for export. As cat­e­gory man­ag­ers, the com­pa­
nies con­trol the sup­ply of pine­ap­ples (and other trop­i­cal fruit) to
the EU, includ­ing those feed­ing into niche mar­kets based on eth­i­
cal con­cerns. Many small­hold­ers have been forced to stop pine­ap­
ple pro­duc­tion due to non-pay­ment by export­ers and are unable
to switch to grow­ing MD2 due to the expenses involved. Some
are sur­viv­ing by becom­ing sup­pli­ers of niche prod­ucts for the EU
mar­ket but this is only an option for the most effi­cient farm­ers
who can com­ply with the quan­ti­ta­tive and qual­i­ta­tive require­
ments. Many non-indig­e­nous small­hold­ers have lost their access
to land fol­low­ing the estab­lish­ment of the large-scale pine­ap­ple
com­pa­nies. All they can hope for is a job as an agri­cul­tural low-
wage labourer on the large-scale farms.
The exclu­sion of most small­hold­ers from the Ghana-EU pine­
ap­ple chain has not been caused by the same fac­tors as in the
Kenya-UK chain for veg­e­ta­bles. Pri­vate stan­dards in gen­eral, and
Eu­rep­GAP require­ments in par­tic­u­lar, have been of minor impor­
tance, with the nota­ble excep­tion of their role in the export of
pro­cessed prod­ucts to UK retail­ers. The mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion, exclu­
sion and subsequent partial inclu­sion of small­hold­ers has been
due to prod­uct dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion by trans­na­tional com­pa­nies with
the abil­ity to cover the (partly self-con­structed) new pref­er­ences
among EU con­sum­ers. Retail­ers in the EU encoun­ter large trans­na­
tional com­pa­nies with highly branded prod­ucts that are dif­fi­cult
to replace with the super­mar­kets’ own brands. This is because
the trans­na­tional plan­ta­tion com­pa­nies con­trol substantial parts
of the pine­ap­ple chain from the own­er­ship of land used for cul­
ti­va­tion to con­trol­ling the logis­tics and act­ing as a gate­keeper to
super­mar­ket shelves. As cat­e­gory man­ag­ers, the com­pa­nies not
only occupy a com­mand­ing position in the sup­ply chain but also
sup­ply the super­mar­kets with a full range of prod­ucts. Con­cerns
for visual appear­ance, food safety, con­ve­nience and eth­ics (such
as envi­ron­ment and fair trade) are impor­tant mark­ers for prod­
uct dif­fer­en­ti­a­tion and the cre­a­tion of niche mar­kets. The pine­
ap­ple sec­tor in Ghana illus­trates how com­pa­nies can par­tic­i­pate
in the restruc­tur­ing pro­cess by stim­u­lat­ing niche pro­duc­tion by
qual­i­fied small­hold­ers.
As this paper has illus­trated, small­hold­ers are not a homog­e­
nous group and the impact of agri­cul­tural glob­ali­sa­tion pro­cesses
on small­hold­ers in the Global South can­not be char­ac­ter­ised in
binary terms like included or excluded (Bern­stein, 2006). This is,
how­ever, the usual way to frame the issue in stud­ies that exam­
ine the impact of glob­ali­sa­tion, includ­ing stan­dards, on small­hold­
ers. Tra­di­tional GVC anal­y­sis needs to move beyond a focus on the
one-dimen­sional rela­tion­ship between firms and small­hold­ers
and incor­po­rate anal­y­ses of live­li­hood impli­ca­tions for dif­fer­ent
groups of small­hold­ers. Some of these issues have been taken up
in GVC stud­ies of the living and work­ing con­di­tions for agri­cul­
tural labour in var­i­ous agro-based indus­tries (see Kritz­in­ger et al.
(2004) and Math­er (2004)) but they are con­spic­u­ously absent in
stud­ies of GVCs in which small­hold­ers are pre­dom­i­nant. Turn­ing
to live­li­hood stud­ies, as de Haan and Zo­o­mers (2005, 33) have
argued: ‘Although trans­form­ing struc­tures, medi­at­ing pro­cesses,
insti­tu­tions and orga­ni­za­tions appear in all live­li­hood frame­works,
there is a ten­dency within live­li­hoods stud­ies to down­play these
struc­tural fea­tures and to focus on cap­i­tals and activ­i­ties’. As this
study has shown, small­hold­ers’ live­li­hoods can be greatly affected
by insti­tu­tions oper­at­ing on a global scale. Through focus­sing on
an empir­i­cal case, we have dem­on­strated how link­ing bot­tom-up
live­li­hood stud­ies with top-down GVC anal­y­sis can fur­ther our
 N. Fold, K.V. Gough / Geoforum 39 (2008) 1687–1697
under­stand­ing of how live­li­hoods are affected by insti­tu­tions at all
lev­els.
Com­bin­ing live­li­hood stud­ies with insights from GVC anal­y­sis
could counter the ‘hype’ cre­ated around a few suc­cess sto­ries of indi­
vid­ual farm­ers or farmer groups that have climbed entry bar­ri­ers due
to the assis­tance of benev­o­lent NGOs, trans­na­tional plan­ta­tion com­
pa­nies and/or retail­ers in the EU. As this study has shown, these small­
hold­ers are the tip of the ice­berg. The major­ity of small­hold­ers pre­vi­
ously involved in the Ghana-EU pine­ap­ple chain are only par­tially, if
at all, still play­ing a role in the chain. Some now work as labour­ers
on large-scale farms whilst the future for many small­hold­ers may
well be to pro­duce for the local mar­ket where demand is ris­ing from
the increas­ing num­ber of Gha­na­ian pro­ces­sors who are mak­ing juice.
Although the local mar­ket is less lucra­tive than sell­ing for export, it
is also less vol­a­tile and may well be a bet­ter option for small­hold­ers
who have found them­selves at the whim of changes in Euro­pean con­
sumer pref­er­ences orches­trated by trans­na­tion­als.
Acknowl­edge­ment
This work forms part of the research programme ‘Rural–urban
dynam­ics in a glob­al­is­ing world’ funded by the Dan­ish Min­is­try
of For­eign Affairs’ Con­sul­ta­tive Research Com­mit­tee for Devel­op­
ment Research (Grant No. 91206). The assis­tance of Mr. Leo Lary­ea
with the field­work is grate­fully acknowl­edged as is Dr. Agnes Budu
for stim­u­lat­ing dis­cus­sions and logis­ti­cal assis­tance. Kent Pørksen
kindly assisted with the fig­ures.
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