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Impact of land grabbing on food security: evidence from Ghana

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Abstract

Following the 2007–08 multiple crises, land-rich nations witnessed an unprecedented rise in land grabbing by different actors. However, there is a lack of evidence for the impact of land grabbing by actors even though such information could be very useful for development, theoretical and empirical studies. This study investigates the food security (i.e., household income food consumption score, household food insecurity access score, and self-reported food security) impacts of land grabbing by domestic (LGDE) and foreign entities (LGFE) in Ghana, using a farm household-level data from a survey conducted during the 2017/2018 cropping season. Specifically, we test two main hypotheses on food security impacts of LGDE and LGFE: (i) given that land grabbing leads to farmland loss and fewer job opportunities, food security will decrease under both LGDE and LGFE; and (ii) the decrease in food security will be higher under LGFE as compared to LGDE since foreign actors dominate in land grabbing, and control more land than domestic actors. The multinomial endogenous switching regression and multinomial endogenous treatment effect models were applied to control for potential selection bias and to test these hypotheses. The results revealed that a decrease in food security ranged between 15 and 61% for LGDE, and 11% and 49% for LGFE. These suggest that both LGDE and LGFE decrease food security but the decrease is much associated with LGDE as compared to LGFE. Thus, concerns about the negative impacts of land grabbing should be directed to all actors in land grabbing. The findings also have implications for development, theoretical and empirical studies which are presented and discussed.

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Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Source: Authors’ design, 2018

Fig. 3

Source: Field Survey, 2018

Fig. 4

Source: Field survey, 2018

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Notes

  1. In this study, land grabbing includes land acquisitions that are non-consultative and lead to displacement of households from their land (Lands Commission, 2016).

  2. LGDE includes all land grabs that are wholly perpetuated by local entities (Levien, 2011) whiles LGFE includes all land grabs that are carried out by foreign entities (Amanor, 2012).

  3. We have conducted a Small-Hsiao test for Independent and Irrelevant Alternative (IIA) assumption and Wald test of combining outcome categories. In all cases, the null hypotheses fail to be rejected, suggesting that land grabbing is appropriately categorized (see Tables 4 and 5 of appendix).

  4. Due to space limitation, the details for constructing each of these indicators are not presented here but can be provided upon request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Agricultural and Food Economics, University for Development Studies, Tamale, Ghana

    Abdul-Hanan Abdallah

  2. Department of Applied Economics, University for Development Studies, Tamale, Ghana

    Michael Ayamga

  3. Department of Economics, University for Development Studies, Tamale, Ghana

    Joseph A. Awuni

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  1. Abdul-Hanan Abdallah
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  2. Michael Ayamga
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  3. Joseph A. Awuni
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Correspondence to Abdul-Hanan Abdallah.

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Appendix

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Table 4 Small-Hsiao tests of IIA assumption (N = 635)
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4,

Table 5 Wald tests for combining alternatives (N = 635)
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5 and

Table 6 Mixed multinomial logit model estimates of exposure to land grabbing (First stage of the MESR)
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6.

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Abdallah, AH., Ayamga, M. & Awuni, J.A. Impact of land grabbing on food security: evidence from Ghana. Environ Dev Sustain 25, 6071–6094 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10668-022-02294-7

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