Large-Scale Farming in the Face of Competing Land Uses in Abidjan District, Côte d’Ivoire

Songon Subprefecture is located to the west of the Abidjan metropolitan area, 23 km (14 miles) from Abidjan’s central business district (Le Plateau), and covers an area of 621.71 km² (240.04 sq. mi.) (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Location of Songon Subprefecture within the Autonomous District of Abidjan

With a density of 132 inhabitants per square kilometer (51 per square mile), this is a rural area in the process of periurbanization that is mostly occupied by the Indigenous [1] Ébrié people. The area benefits from a subequatorial climate conducive to plantations of oil palms, rubber trees and banana trees. Since the colonial era, administrations have encouraged the arrival of public- and private-sector operators to develop agriculture, thus encouraging the establishment of a number of large-scale farms. Today, there remain just five, mostly with SPA (société privéé anonyme – private limited company) status—and belonging in some cases to multinational firms—which exploit vast areas of arable land that can cover up to 1,000 hectares (2,500 acres).

This article reports on research aimed at analyzing the different modes of access to land by public and private operators (purchase, rental, inheritance and long-lease concessions), who manage large farms in Songon Subprefecture. This is exploratory research into little-studied rationales, even though these lands are the subject of a number of claims in this area on the fringes of the Abidjan metropolitan area. A method combining documentary research and field surveys was adopted. Documentary research was carried out on the premises of the Songon branch of the Côte d’Ivoire Ministry of Agriculture and the Agence Nationale d’Appui au Développement Rural (ANADER ; National Agency to Support Rural Development). The initial information provided by this structure and observations in the field enabled us to inventory these large farms and the village(s) to which they belong. Meetings and interviews were also held with farm managers, company agents, and customary authorities in the surrounding villages—in particular Abadjin-Kouté, Songon-Kassemblé, Songon-Dagbé, Abiaté, and Nonkouagon.

Large farms incorporated as limited companies and focused on international markets

Songon Subprefecture is home to five large farms, detailed in the table and map below.

Table 1. Large-scale farming operations in Songon Subprefecture

Figure 2. Large farms in Songon Subprefecture

All these large farms, structured as national or international SPAs, share common features in terms of organization, resources and production destination. As described by Chaléard (1979, p. 256), they comprise two major units : the arable blocks, extending over tens or even thousands of hectares of single-crop planting, and the supporting infrastructure (Figure 2). These farms mobilize considerable material and human resources. A large workforce is employed, with numbers varying from one farm to another, depending on the size of the area cultivated (Chaléard 1984, p. 330). The largest farm (SCB-CDBCI) covers an area of 2,292 ha (5,664 acres) (including plantations outside Songon) and employs 2,102 laborers, an average of one laborer per hectare. These workers come from various locations and receive an average monthly wage of between 80,000 and 100,000 West African CFA francs (F.CFA). [2]

These large-scale operations produce and market natural rubber (TRCI, CNRA), dessert bananas (SCB-CDBCI, BATIA-SPD & Cie), palm oil and palm kernels (Palmafrique). Most of the production is destined for foreign markets, with a small proportion for the local market.

Figure 3. Plantation of rubber trees in Songon Subprefecture

Figure 4. Plantation of dessert bananas in Songon Subprefecture

Diverse modes of access to land resources for large farms

A typology of the status of land occupied by large farms, based on the data collected, has enabled us to identify several modes of access to land : purchase, rental, inheritance, and long-lease concessions (Table 2).

Table 2. Modes of access to land for large-scale farming operations (all data in hectares)

Purchase is a contract which confers the acquisition of a portion of land in return for payment of a predefined price. This is how SCB-CDBCI, for example, has bought out the farms of certain former land-title holders, in order to expand its business and boost production. The same applies to BATIA-SPD & Cie, which acquired 6 hectares (15 acres) from a family in the village of Songon-Dagbé.

Leasing involves occupying a portion of land in return for payment of rent in kind or in cash. The company does not own the land it uses. For example, BATIA-SPD & Cie rents a 16-hectare (40-acre) plot from the Songon-Dagbé village community for 40,000 F.CFA a year. SCB-CDBCI, for its part, manages farmland belonging to private owners under a lease-management contract (management of a farm called AILLOT SARL from July 26, 2011, to July 31, 2017).

Inheritance refers to the transmission of properties through succession. The CNRA holds 579.41 ha (1,431.75 acres) of colonial land titles and allocation decrees from the Ministries of Agriculture and of Water and Forests. These properties were inherited from the former public research institutions created during the colonial era and at the start of the country’s independence after 1960.

Finally, concessions by emphyteutic lease characterize land granted by the state. [3] An “emphyteutic lease” is a lease agreement on rural land for a period of between 18 and 99 years. This form of transfer is one of the measures accompanying the privatization or reorganization of state-owned companies, most of which were shaken by the severe economic crisis of the 1980s. In the Songon Subprefecture, for example, the Domaine Hévéicole de l’État (DHE) in Anguédédou was bought out in 1995 by an SPA and renamed TRCI (Tropical Rubber Côte d’Ivoire), while the Sodepalm (Société pour le Développement du Palmier à Huile) station at Anguédédou was sold to the SPA Palmafrique in 1996 (Koffi 2007, pp. 130-131 ; MINAGRA 1999). In addition, the CNRA, a consortium of research institutes set up in 1998, took over management of the 500-hectare (1,235-acre) Anguédédou state experimental plantations.

This diversity of access to land contributes to the development of large farms, which juxtapose several modes of tenure : direct tenure, when ownership and operation overlap ; indirect tenure, when the owner and the operator are different ; and, most often, mixed modes, depending on the status of the land.

Farms struggling with urban sprawl and customary claims

The immobilization of vast areas by farms and the expansion of the Abidjan metropolis towards the Songon agricultural areas have greatly increased the pressure on land, leading to local induced effects. These are manifested in conflicts involving villages and communities, and constraints on large farms.

The presence of large-scale farms in the metropolitan landscape is a potential source of conflict with riverside villages. They occupy land originally belonging to the Ebriés, the customary owners of this area (Figure 2), who feel that they have not been purged of this right. As a result, they are asserting their rights as customary owners as the land dwindles, increasing the land pressure felt locally (N’Koumo 2015, p. 55). These claims are sometimes expressed violently, as in 2015, when the village communities of Abiaté, Nonkouagon and Songon-Agban, bordering the SCB, rose up in protest. They can lead to compensation premiums being paid by the SPAs. The village of Abadjin-Kouté receives 20,000,000 F.CFA per year from TRCI as compensation for land occupied under arrangements between the two parties (10,000,000 F.CFA in cash and 10,000,000 F.CFA in equipment). The village of Songon-Dagbé obtained 40,000 F.CFA per year and social assistance following negotiations with BATIA-SPD & Cie. These demands are a call to large-scale operations to assume social responsibility.

In addition to conflicts between large farms and village communities, land rivalry between neighboring villages can also emerge. In fact, large-scale farms maintain interested relationships with a few privileged villages, so much so that all villages located in the vicinity of a large-scale farm come to claim ownership or co-ownership of the land occupied. Such is the case of the village of Songon-Kassemblé, claiming co-ownership of the community land that Songon-Dagbé leases to BATIA-SPD & Cie.

These conflicts are further exacerbated by the advancing urbanization front to the west of the Abidjan metropolis, which increases competition between agricultural and built-up areas. Large farms are gradually being overtaken by the city, and find themselves surrounded by urban projects (new housing, equipment, infrastructure and industrial activities), sometimes necessitating the expropriation of areas occupied by plantations. TRCI and Palmafrique, for example, have lost several hundred square meters of their land to a state-initiated urban project (Figures 5 and 6). Hevea and oil palm plantations have been destroyed to make way for the asphalting of the Allokoi-Koloukro road linking the northern freeway to the Dabou road. All farms are affected by the pressure of urbanization and the emergence of new non-agricultural activities in their vicinity. As a result, they are confined to their original perimeter, with no possibility of expansion.

Figures 5 and 6. Part of the TRCI plantation destroyed and redeveloped for the asphalting of the route from Allokoi to Koloukro (the Dabou road)

A complex juxtaposition of modes of access to land weakened by local demands and land pressure from urbanization

This study of large-scale farms in the Songon Subprefecture shows the complex juxtaposition of different modes of access to land, with local subsistence of traditional forms linked to the maintenance of customary law. The land occupied is privately or publicly owned—or, more rarely, is owned by Indigenous communities and farmed under direct, indirect or mixed tenure. Today, these large farms face a number of problems, accentuated to varying degrees by the proximity and expansion of the Abidjan metropolitan area. On the one hand, there are land claims from neighboring Ébrié villages, sometimes leading to settlements, and, on the other, reductions in occupied land through expropriation. In the medium and long term, these difficulties could be exacerbated by growing urban pressure, and pose a problem for the maintenance of large farms in the metropolitan area, the expansion of which remains the likely future trend in terms of economic model.

Bibliography

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