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SummaryThis article argues that the greatest economic and social transformations of the early colonial period in West Africa, the "cash-crop revolution", and "the slow death of slavery" and debt bondage, had stronger and more varied causal connections than previously realized. The economic circumstances of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century West Africa delayed and diluted abolitionist measures. Indeed, the coercion of labour, through the exercise of property rights in people, contributed to the speed with which the cash-crop economies developed. Conversely, however, the scale and composition of cash-crop expansion did much to determine that the slave trade and pawning would be replaced by a consensual labour market. They also shaped the possibilities for peasant versus larger-scale organization of production, and the distribution of income by gender and between communities.

This study focused on the production factors and marketing mix of five indigenous cash crops cultivated by 67 women farmer- entrepreneurs in the municipalities of Tadian and Lower Bauko in Mountain Province, Philippines. The study used descriptive statistics and applied profit analysis in the analysis of its findings. Results of this study show that the factors that limit the respondents' production are limited access to transportation, rainfed irrigation, and limited access to agricultural inputs and loans. In marketing their produce, it was found that the respondents have limited knowledge on processing, packaging, labeling, promoting and financial record keeping. They can hardly bargain for a higher price as the suggested retail prices (SRPs) for indigenous cash crops are not set. In terms of income per hectare, pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan) records the highest income annually of PhP 292,505 (USD 5,850). Overall, the income of the respondents remains below the poverty threshold for Filipinos in 2018, which was PhP 10,727 monthly. It is recommended that a market system be adopted by the local government in partnership with concerned agencies. In designing the system, it may be good to include a policy on crop production calendar where planting of crops is done per cluster, plan on setting SRP to regulate the prices, create a procedure on centralized distribution system, and identify a strategy in designing agricultural loans.

In this article, I provide an analysis of local decision making surrounding crop commercialization in the Kolli Hills, South India. I argue that in the context of changes in the physical environment, cultivating tapioca (cassava) as a cash crop is a conscious decision made by small farmers based on their perceptions of environmental insecurity. Farmers understand market integration as key to coping with external, uncontrollable changes and to fulfilling household and community aspirations. Decisions to cultivate tapioca have contributed to aspects of community development and increasing political agency on the part of villagers.

This study draws together information on the technology available to small-scale farmers in sub-Saharan Africa for the production of cotton, coffee and tea. It records the wide variation in the national average yields of these crops, as well as the differences in productivity that exist between smallholders and commercial powers in the same country. A recurring theme in the paper is that, unlike food crops, which have to be produced for survival irrespective of government interventions, yields of these cash crops are heavily dependent upon government policies and management capacity. (DÜI-Hff)

In 2003, the poverty alleviation bureau in Xishuangbanna, China, introduced tea and rubber as cash crops to raise the incomes of ethnic-minority farmers who were thought to be backward and unfamiliar with markets. Using Marx's commodity fetish and Polly Hill's critique of "cash crops", this paper analyses the cultural politics of ethnicity for Akha and Dai farmers in relation to tea and rubber. When the prefecture government introduces "cash crops", the state retains its authority as the dispenser of knowledge, crops and modernity. When tea and rubber become commodities, however, some of the symbolic value of the commodity seems to stick to farmers, making rubber farmers "modern" and tea farmers "ethnic" in new ways. Through rising incomes and enhanced identities, Akha and Dai farmers unsettle stereotypes of themselves as "backward". As a result of income levels matching those of urban middle-class residents, rubber farmers even challenge the prevalent social hierarchy. (JCCA/GIGA)

ABSTRACTThe spread of cocoa cultivation among the Maka in the 1950s created new labour demands. These were not met by wage labour, as in most cocoa producing areas, but rather by a novel system of working groups. Specific economic factors can help to explain why wage labour did not develop within the villages, but it is also clear that the preference of the Maka for more cooperative labour arrangements was related to broader socio‐cultural characteristics of this society—notably the somewhat paradoxical tension between strong levelling mechanisms and an equally strong emphasis on personal ambition. The new working groups were based on reciprocal exchange of labour, but money came to play an increasing role in their functioning. They allowed for a certain degree of commodification of labour to the advantage of richer farmers, but ultimately they restricted the rise of more structural inequalities. The recent crisis in cash‐cropping makes it clear that a system of working groups can offer farmers more flexibility than wage labour in the face of the vagaries of world‐market prices.