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Periodical article Periodical article Leiden University catalogue Leiden University catalogue WorldCat catalogue WorldCat
Title:The Changing Patterns of Labor Relations in the Cocoa Farming Belt of Southwestern Nigeria, 1950s to 1990s
Author:Walker, Ezekiel AyodeleISNI
Year:2000
Periodical:African Economic History
Volume:20
Pages:123-140
Language:English
Geographic term:Nigeria
Subjects:agricultural workers
labour relations
cocoa
History and Exploration
Labor and Employment
Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment
Development and Technology
External link:https://www.jstor.org/stable/3601651
Abstract:This article analyses changing patterns of labour relations in the cocoa farming belt of Nigeria on the basis of oral interviews conducted in the area between 1989 and 1993 and in 2000. The 1940s and 1950s witnessed the greatest expansion of the cocoa economy of southwestern Nigeria with the influx of migrants from several Yoruba-speaking areas. These new migrants and the already established landowners used annual labourers to clear the land and prepare the soil for cocoa cultivation. In the 1970s, however, conditions began to change as a result of the exodus of substantial numbers of labourers from the cocoa growing areas, first because of the Nigerian civil war, and then because of the oil boom. The resulting high cost of labour compelled the majority of the farmers in the cocoa belt to begin to use sharecroppers and daily paid workers in large numbers. The introduction of the structural adjustment programme (SAP) during the 1980s intensified the changes in labour relations that were already taking place. With the deregulation of the cocoa trade, a relentless price war erupted which resulted in a temporary boom for cocoa farmers. However, this also led to a phenomenal rise in the wages of labour, and as farmers were increasingly unable to pay these high wages, sharecropping escalated. Notes, ref.
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