“Smallholders in Ghana, as elsewhere, are widely considered to be the largest as well
as the most vulnerable component of the rural sector. Ghana professes national development objectives of reducing rural poverty through the increased productivity and commercialization of smallholder agriculture. As a starting point for more detailed discussion of smallholder
investment options, this paper explores general questions of definition, i.e. who smallholders are, what and how they produce, and the extent to which they are linked with markets. This work uses household survey data, district-level production data and a variety of mapped infrastructural and biophysical data to characterize the production environments and characteristics of smallholder agriculture. This paper explores the relevance of geographically-differentiated characteristics. Several key issues are highlighted: the less prevalent
use of inputs, lower commercialization, and lower welfare rates of producers with
smaller landholdings. Such relationships change in degree, but not in nature, over
geographical space. At the same time, it is difficult to impose a “smallholder” definition on a continuum of characteristics that for the most part do not show clear or consistent threshold effects.”
