Long-term land- and water-tenure security – a key to sustainable use

Although rice is the preferred staple food in the Gambia, only modest quantities are grown locally. Most of the domestic demand is met by imports, principally from South East Asia – which is a strategy not without its problems, especially in view of the recent food price volatility. Are there strategies for growing more rice locally, particularly when the full costs of production can be higher than import costs? ‘Land for labour’ offers one solution to the problem.

‘Labour force of women without land’ unites with ‘landowners without labour’

Early in the 1980s, the Gambia entered a phase, common to many developing countries, of investing in lowland rice irrigation schemes to increase local production of staple foods. The strategy was to build capital-intensive production systems using high-input technology.

However, it did not function well. Although it temporarily increased rice output, it was not sustainable. The strategy relied on imported technology, substantial foreign technical assistance and scarce foreign exchange, and it was implemented in an environment in which agricultural support institutions were weak.

In the mid-1990s, the search continued for other ways of increasing rice production, especially in poor households with a food deficit and little or no cash for buying imports. It was thought that rice could still be produced competitively – even with falling world prices and increasing costs of production – by working directly with disadvantaged people and using the right technologies.

But there proved to be no quick solution.

A long-term strategy was needed – set within a strong policy and institutional framework – that would engage poor rural communities in the planning and implementation process.

Changing the land-tenure system

Women are the traditional rice growers in the Gambia, but to grow more rice they needed access to more land. Most of the lowland areas suitable for rice growing were owned and controlled by a small number of influential farmers – the original founder-settlers. Not having access to enough labour to exploit the land, they allowed some poor landless farmers, most of whom were women, to borrow and work the land seasonally.

However, incentives for borrowing land to improve productivity were few. Once the season was over, the founder-settlers took the land back, including land that had been improved for the season.

Through discussions with communities, a plan was formulated to devolve land ownership from the founder-settlers to those landless poor farmers willing to participate in its reclamation. This would ensure that the investments made by individuals would be retained by them.

It would give people a clear incentive to contribute labour for reclamation in return for a secure landholding, and to assume responsibility for infrastructure operation and management after the end of the programme.

The founder-settlers also gained by the agreement. They had ‘idle lands’ with difficult physical access that hindered cultivation. Once landholders and the women agreed to this new arrangement, the Lowlands Agricultural Development Programme (LADEP) invested in infrastructure that opened up the land for use. The women farmers also agreed to provide labour, as a group, to the founder-settlers. Combining ‘a labour force of women without land’ with ‘landowners without labour’ produced a win-win situation. In the Gambia, when such an agreement is made at the community level, it gains legal value under traditional law.

From 1997 to 2005, LADEP worked as a catalyst to bring about this change in the traditional land-tenure system. Individually owned land was first devolved to the community, which distributed it equitably among those individuals, mainly women, participating in land reclamation. This was done irrespective of lineage. Women participants – some 22,000 – now own land definitively, and their children will be able to inherit it.

A problem of work loads?

One risk of encouraging women farmers to participate in the programme was an increase in their workloads. They already provide most of the labour for rice growing. So would additional reclamation work, availability of more land and processing of increased rice yields just add to their burden? Interestingly, surveys found that only five of the eleven impact assessment sites reported an increase. At the others, women actually said their workload had decreased.

Workload increased in areas where the area under cultivation increased. However, this tended to be in areas where people were not so heavily involved in rice growing before the programme began.

Workload decreased where the investment in flood control dikes reduced land preparation time by as much as one third, where LADEP constructed swamp access bridges to reduce travel time (as much as an hour in each direction) and where farmers used tractors for ploughing.

Workloads may also have been reduced because the work is now shared among a larger number of people. The number of rice growers has increased significantly – men, co-wives and daughters are taking up rice farming on their own account. So some households now have as many as five rice farmers, and some of the new land is being farmed by these new entrants.

Gender roles slow to change

A conscious effort was made throughout LADEP to ensure that the programme did not undermine women’s traditional access to and control of rice and the resources needed to grow it, as had occurred in earlier projects. Assessments suggest that programme inputs have caused little change in the division of labour. Women traditionally have responsibility for rice growing and harvesting, hoes, seed, small ruminants, vegetables and, now, also for the reclaimed swamp rice land. Men continue to take responsibility for ‘male pride’ issues (e.g. cattle and upland crops) and money.

In three villages, however, the programme has enabled the entry of men with no previous tradition of rice cultivation. Although women still managed these items, they no longer had exclusive access.

Lessons learned

The LADEP approach to land tenure is now widely accepted in the country and is ready for scaling up to the national level. A new project – the Participatory Integrated Watershed Management Project (PIWAMP) – was begun in 2005 and will follow the LADEP principles:

• Poverty can effectively be reduced when rice land is equitably distributed between poor women farmers and founder-settlers.
• Household food security can be improved if the landless are assisted in permanently acquiring productive land.
  
• Land reforms must be initiated by the participants and agreed on in mutually binding arrangements (under traditional or other law) before infrastructure measures are put in place.