The Cashew Frontier in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa: ChangingLandscapes and Livelihoods

Marina Padrão Temudo & Manuel Abrantes

Published online: 4 February 2014# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Abstract Guinea-Bissau farmers are replacing shifting culti-vation with cashew (Anacardium occidentale) orchards inresponse to international and national economic and conser-vation policies, local social changes and perceived increasingclimate instability. However, changes from relative food self-provisioning to full dependence on one cash crop and from acomplex mosaic of agricultural fields, fallows and forestpatches to a homogenous landscape of cashew agroforestsimpacts both the natural environment and livelihoods. Thisarticle on the demise of shifting cultivation in the tropicscontributes to the growing body of scholarship on land use-cover change (LUCC) and its multiplex global, national andlocal drivers, varying across time and space. Further, we arguethat instead of adopting an approach exclusively focused onparks, conservation-oriented external interventions should en-gage with farmers in the development of innovations that bothpreserve forest ecosystems and enhance food security.

Keywords Cashcrops .Foodsecurity .Land tenure .LUCC .

Shifting cultivation alternatives

Introduction

Lambin and Meyfroidt (2011: 3465) state that “A centralchallenge for sustainability is how to preserve forest ecosys-tems and the services that they provide us while enhancingfood production” and that enabling policies must conceivechanges in land use as embedded in “global-scale, open sys-tems.” Scholars have been contesting the myths around somemajor drivers of deforestation in the tropics and its analysis inisolation from global-scale factors (e.g., Lambin et al. 2001).

Despite the fact that GIS and remote sensing technologieshave made impressive contributions towards improving ourknowledge on land use-cover change (LUCC)— particularlythrough new multidisciplinary research aiming to link peopleand pixels (e.g., Alvarez and Naughton-Treves 2003; Mortonet al. 2006; Amanor and Pabi 2007; Hecht and Saatchi 2007;Walker and Peters 2007; Self. Ref. 3) and the development ofa land change science (e.g., Turner II and Robbins 2008)—the causes of LUCC remain poorly understood and are oftenaddressed by “simplifications” and “myths” (Lambin et al.2001).

Lambin et al. (2001) identified tropical deforestation,rangeland modifications, agricultural intensification and ur-banization as the four key classes of land change, and con-cluded that LUCC is mainly driven by individual and socialresponses to economic opportunities, mediated by institution-al factors—and never by population pressure or poverty alone(see also Amanor and Pabi 2007; Hecht and Saatchi 2007;Walker and Peters 2007). Geist and Lambin (2002) focused onthe causes of deforestation in the tropics and coded the manyvariables: infrastructure extension, agricultural expansion,wood extraction, and other factors (pre-disposingenvironmental factors, biophysical drivers and social triggerevents) were seen as the proximate causes of deforestation,with demographic, economic, technological, policy and insti-tutional and cultural factors identified as underlying drivers. Inparticular, livelihood conditions that may promote or limitdeforestation are under scrutiny (Walker and Peters 2007;Cramb et al. 2009; Radel et al. 2010; Self. Ref. 3).

Shifting cultivation1 remains an important agriculturalstrategy in the tropics (Cramb et al. 2009; Fox et al. 2009;

1 The terms shifting cultivation, swidden cultivation and slash-and-burnagriculture have been commonly used in the literature as synonymous,and include a wide range of practices in which woody vegetation is cutand burned and fields are left fallow after a period of cultivation to allowrecovery of woody vegetation (Mertz et al. 2009: 260).

M. P. Temudo (*) :M. AbrantesTropical Research Institute, IICT, Lisbon, Portugale-mail: marinatemudo@gmail.com

Hum Ecol (2014) 42:217–230DOI 10.1007/s10745-014-9641-0

Mertz et al. 2009). Despite the fact that many farmers havebeen adopting a diversity of land-use alternatives and off-farmincome sources (Cramb et al. 2009; Mertz et al. 2009), elim-ination of shifting cultivation has been widely advocated as asolution for merging environmental and food security con-cerns—either through mainstream agricultural intensificationor the adoption of ecologically-sound agroforestry techniques(Palm et al. 2005).

Agricultural intensification in the tropics, driven by demo-graphic and institutional factors (particularly property re-gimes) andmarket forces, has focusedmainly on tree planting,the adoption of new field crops, and the development ofhorticulture—with diverse consequences in terms of LUCC(Keys and McConnell 2005). However, as Perfecto andVandermeer (2010) note, tropical small-scale agroecologicalproduction creates an “agroecological matrix” that constitutesa better solution for merging food security and environmentalconcerns than the “land-sparing/agricultural intensificationmodel” (see also Hecht and Saatchi 2007). In particular, theassociation of fruit and multi-purpose trees can contribute tosoil and water conservation, carbon sequestration and thegeneration of a regular cash income (Aiyelaagbe 1994). How-ever, the poor adoption rates of externally-induced agroforest-ry alternatives to shifting cultivation have been due to a biastowards “biophysical solutions” (Pollini 2009; see alsoAiyelaagbe 1994). This makes the study of endogenous inno-vations in which shifting cultivation has been replaced by anagroforestry alternative extremely important, as is the case ofthe expansion of cashew cultivation in Guinea-Bissau.

This article contributes to the local understandings of thecomplex interaction between agro-ecology and the socio-political history of Guinea-Bissau, and of the sometimes high-ly multifaceted and profusely interlocked drivers of land use-cover change, in which global factors play an important role.We present a historical holistic view of how a colonial inter-vention intended to combine ecological restoration with eco-nomic benefits through cashew plantations ended up reducingbiodiversity and increasing food insecurity. We describe theglobal and local conditions under which a cash crop agricul-tural frontier was created, how cashew plantations changedexisting farming systems, livelihoods and the agro-ecologicalmatrix. We conclude that, even though farmers are convertingshifting cultivation into permanent agriculture—with somelikely positive consequences in terms of carbon emissionsreduction and soil conservation— the agroforests they createdare simpler than the forest patches they replaced, which aredisappearing. Although conservation interventions in Guinea-Bissau are strictly focused on biodiversity protection insideparks, nature reserves and fauna corridors, the consequencesof cashew expansion in terms of biodiversity conservation,environmental services and food security call for participatorymulti-disciplinary landscape-based research. Such an ap-proach, if rooted in farmers existing practices, objectives and

needs, will be able to develop economically viable, ecologi-cally sound, and socio-culturally appropriate alternatives tofarmers’ current practices outside protected areas (see alsoHecht and Saatchi 2007).

Methods

Over 20 years of fieldwork, we used a mixed-methods re-search approach (Bernard 2006) in the study of local knowl-edge, livelihoods, land use changes, and the impact of devel-opment and conservation interventions, although the regionalfocus has been expanded during this period. The first authorhas worked in almost 400 villages across the country, many ofwhich were revisited several times. Generally, both authorsworked in clusters of villages, living in one village of eachcluster (at a maximum distance of 20 km from the others).

Ethno-agronomic research (based on participant observa-tion, in-depth interviews, focus-group discussions, informalconversations, biographies) has been conducted since 1993,mainly in Tombali and Quinara provinces (Fig. 1). Between2008 and 2010 (a total of 9 months) a questionnaire withclosed and open-ended questions regarding farming systems,burning practices and land tenure was administered to groupsof farmers in sets of villages (N=260, Fig. 2) belonging toeach administrative sector of the country. The first round ofvillage clusters were selected to be close to the vegetationplots used by the remote sensing and vegetation specialists,but the sample was then enlarged to include all ethnic groupsand differences in infrastructural development and farmingsystems.

Since 2011, however, research was mostly focused oncashew introduction and extensification pathways, techniquesused, and impacts on livelihoods, environmental services andland tenure. This new questionnaire—with closed and open-ended questions—was administered to clusters of villages (n=75 to date) of Gabu, Bafata, Oio, Tombali and Quinara prov-inces (Fig. 1) of the previous extended sample. These villageswere inhabited by the three most important ethnic groups, whocomprise about 65 % of the population (INEC 1996): theBalanta (settled in northern and southern coastal areas ofOio, Quinara and Tombali, non-Muslim, the biggest riceproducers and specialists in mangrove swamp rice produc-tion), and the Fula and the Mandinga (settled in the easternhinterland of Gabu and Bafatá, Muslim, upland slash-and-burn producers of sorghum, millet, maize and peanuts, andof lowland freshwater swamp rice). Although the same ques-tionnaire was used during the four years, results were notinfluenced by time, as questions about land use cover changesin each village weremade in relation to a village benchmark—the date when cashew trees started to be planted every time afield was cleared to produce cereals and/or peanuts. In eachvillage, following local customs, we began by asking the

218 Hum Ecol (2014) 42:217–230

village head for permission to carry out the study and thenasked him to call all household heads to participate in a groupinterview. Women would then be interviewed separately intheir homes, particularly in the villages where we lived.

The multidisciplinary research (combining remote sensing,fauna and flora biodiversity and ethno-agronomic studies) onthe impacts of cashews production is on-going; therefore, herewe use mainly qualitative data for the purpose of characteriz-ing the main drivers of LUCC. All interviews were conductedin Guinea-Bissau Kriol by the authors or in any locallanguage/dialect (and then translated to Kriol by a field assis-tant) when informants were not fluent in the vernacular lan-guage. Unless otherwise stated, all data were collected by theauthors. Based on Catarino’s classification of the country inphyto-geographical regions (2004: 415) and on the results ofour own field research (mainly ethnic distribution and existing

farming systems), we divided the country into three social andagro-ecological relatively homogeneous regions: North andSouth on the coast and East in the interior (Fig. 2 and Table 1).The main difference to the usually adopted division consists inincluding the Farim and Mansabá sectors of Oio province inthe East region rather than in the North.

Aiming to capture the complexity of the human-environment relationships, we adopted a “landscape structur-ation” perspective following Leach and Fairhead (2000),distinguishing between agency and structure and analyzingthe “people” and the “environment” as fragmented and di-verse. In order to facilitate comparison with other LUCC casestudies and meta-analyses (Lambin et al. 2001; Geist andLambin 2002; Keys and McConnell 2005), we provide detailsof both the social and agro-ecological country diversity andthe many and highly intertwined underlying drivers of change.

Fig. 1 Guinea-Bissau provincesand administrative sectors

Fig. 2 Guinea-Bissauagroecological regions andlocation of the villages studied inthe territory of Guinea-Bissausince 2008 (n=260). The symbolsin the figure differentiate thesmaller sample (n=75) of Fula-Mandinga (symbol 1) and Balanta(symbol 2) villages, where in-depth studies on the impact ofcashew production were done,from the remaining villages(symbol 3) where more generalstudies on land use-cover changeswere conducted

Hum Ecol (2014) 42:217–230 219

Guinea-Bissau Social and Agro-Ecological Diversity

Guinea-Bissau is a small, coastal, West African country withan area of 36, 125 km2, bordered by Senegal (North), theRepublic of Guinea (South and East) and the Atlantic Ocean.Jalloh et al. (2011) include the country in the West AfricaSahelian zone characterized by a sub-humid climate and twowell-defined seasons. Rainfall varies greatly from the south(more than 1,800 mm of rain) to the north (more than1,200 mm of rain) in coastal areas, and from the coast to theinterior (less than 1,200 mm of rain) and in general starts at theend of May and lasts until the end of October (Machado, citedin Catarino et al. 2008: 3–4). Ferralsols are the main uplandagricultural soils, but the most productive soils where rice iscultivated in flooded lowlands are either gleysols or fluvisols(FAO-ISRIC-ISSS 1998). Soil and rainfall variations andhuman intervention mostly define the vegetation types, whichbelong to the Guinean-Sudanian transition zone of West-Africa (Catarino et al. 2008). The country has no reliablelong-term agricultural statistics and climate data.

The average population density in 2009 was 41.6 inhabi-tants per square kilometer, but there is a huge diversity acrossthe country, ranging from 116.3 inhabitants per square kilo-meter in the Biombo sector (near the capital city) to 3.2inhabitants per square kilometer in the Boé/Gabu (INEC2009) (Fig. 3). The last ethnic census, conducted in 1991,portrays a large diversity of ethno-linguistic groups, of whichthe biggest are the Balanta (26 %), the Fula (25.4 %), theMandinga (13.7 %), and the Manjak (9.2 %) (INEC 1996).

The ethnic composition of the population, the characteristicflora of each region, the soil and climate conditions, and the

farming systems, all contribute to the constitution of threesocial and agro-ecological relatively homogenous regions:North, East and South. The provinces of Cacheu, Biomboand Oio (with the exception of Farim and Mansabá sectorsin the interior) make up the North (Fig. 1). Although theBalanta and the Manjak are the main ethnic groups, the Northhas the most complex ethnic mix, reflected in an array ofdiverse farming systems. The main vegetation types includethe mangrove forests on the Atlantic lowlands flooded bytides, and the savannah woodlands on the uplands; the regionalso has the most extensive palm groves in the country(Catarino 2004: 411). The Balanta contribute to forestationof the savannahs through the planting and protection of somemultipurpose trees, such as silk-cotton trees (Ceibapentandra), baobabs (Adansonia digitata) and fan palms

Table 1 Main characteristics of the three agro-ecological regions of Guinea-Bissau

Agroecologicalregion

Populationdensity (2009)*

Main ethnicgroups

Rainfall **(2000–2008)

Mainvegetation type

Mainprotected trees

Farming systems, soil types andvegetation cover

North Biombo (115.9)Cacheu (37.2)Oio (41.6)***Region (71.3)

Balanta, Manjak Intermediate(> 1,200)

Savannah woodlands(mostly deciduous)

E. guineensisP. biglobosaF.albidaB. aethiopumC. pentandraA. digitata

Freshwater swamp rice (Gleysols;Savannah grasslands)

Upland cereals and peanuts(Ferralsols; S. woodlands)

Mangrove swamp rice(Fluvisols; Mangroves)

East Bafata (35.1)Gabu (23.6)Region (28.8)***

Fula, Mandinga Minimum(≤ 1,200)

Savannah woodlands(deciduous)

P. biglobosa Upland sorghum, millet, peanuts(Ferralsols; S. woodlands)

Freshwater swamp rice(Gleysols; S. grasslands)

South Quinara (20.3)Tombali (25.4)Region (22.9)

Balanta, Beafada,Nalu

Maximum(≥ 1,800)

Woodlands(semi-deciduous)&Mangrove forests(evergreen)

A. digitataE. guineensisC. pentandraB. aethiopumP. erinaceusP. excelsa

Mangrove swamp rice(Fluvisols; Mangroves)

Upland rice, peanuts (Ferralsols; S.woodlands)

Freshwater swamp rice(Gleysols; S. grasslands)

*INEC (2009); ** Unpublished rainfall data provided by Serviço Nacional de Metereologia da Guiné-Bissau; *** The population from Farim andMansabá sectors was taken from Oio and added to the total of the East region

Tom

bali

Quinara

Oio

Biombo

Bija

gós

Bafatá

Gabú

Cacheu

Bissau

0

50000

100000

150000

200000

250000

300000

350000

400000

450000

1950

1979

1991

2009

Province

Pop

ulation

Fig. 3 Population increase by province. Source: JIU (1959);Departamento Central de Recenseamento (1981); INEC (1996), (2009)

220 Hum Ecol (2014) 42:217–230

(Borassus aethiopum) around their settlements (see Leach andFairhead 2000; Hecht and Saatchi 2007 for a comparison).Parklands have been created by the Manjak, the Pepel and theFelupe, who mainly protect oil palms (Elaeis guineensis)during clearing for upland cereal and peanut production. TheBalanta and the Manjak are cattle herders and practice man-grove and/or freshwater swamp rice production in the low-lands, always complemented by shifting cultivation of sor-ghum, millet, maize, peanuts and sometimes rice (averagecultivation period of 2.7 years and average fallow of 6.1 years)in the upland savannah woodlands. However, there is nointegration of agriculture and cattle herding. After the startof the liberation war, this region faced a gradual decrease inthe importance of mangrove swamp rice production due toecological and social factors, which allowed for the recoveryof the mangrove forests.

The most homogeneous region both in agroecological andethnic terms is the East, consisting of Bafatá and Gabu prov-inces and the Farim andMansabá sectors of Oio. This area hasthe lowest rainfalls, the highest temperatures, and the poorestlateritic soils (Catarino 2004: 414). The main vegetation typesare savannah woodlands in the uplands (where shifting culti-vation of sorghum, millet, maize, peanuts and sometimes riceis practiced, using an average cultivation period of 3.6 years,and an average fallow of 8.2 years) and dry and wet grasslandsin the lowlands. Palm groves occur only in the humid low-lands (Catarino 2004: 416). Big Parkia biglobosa trees arealso protected and used as food, fodder and as an importantsource of income. Extensive peanut cultivation during latecolonial times contributed significantly to the deforestationof the East (Carreira 1962: 278). The Fula and Mandinga arethe dominant ethnic groups. Both are cattle herders and usemilk as a main component of their diet. In order to balance thediet the Fula sell (or exchange for rice) a part of their stock forcereals each year. Permanent cultivation of rice is practiced inthe freshwater swamps and sorghum, millet, maize and pea-nuts are also produced without fallow in the highly fertile landaround the villages where cattle roam. After independence,ox-plowing was introduced by farmers themselves and byseveral development projects only in the East, but it is stillnot a dominant practice. There was a tradition of agriculturaland non-agricultural wild fires, which together with the killingof all stumps and roots during shifting cultivation contributedto a longer forest succession recovery and an erosion ofbiodiversity.

The South comprises the provinces of Quínara andTombali. The latter is located near the border with Guinea. Ithas the highest rainfalls in the country, the most fertileferralsols and fluvisols, and the most dense dry forest patchesand thick mangrove forests (Catarino 2004: 410). Tombali isalso the heart of mangrove swamp rice production, thoughshifting cultivation is also practiced. Production in denseagroforests of cola nuts, mangoes and citrus has been relevant

since colonial times (Fig. 4). Woodlands (with some galleryforests) are the main vegetation cover types in Quinara. AfterIndependence, the importance of shifting cultivation increasedamong non-Balanta farmers, and fruit production gained moresignificance after the 1980s. Shifting cultivation leavesstumps and roots alive after clearing, and the fields are usedfor only 2 years, which allows for a quick re-growth of thesecondary forest. Fallows are also short and, according tofarmers, have been reduced (from a minimum of 9 years toan average of six) after Independence, mainly due to laborconstraints, not population increase. Big trees, whether fruit,medicinal, or timber and some shadow trees are protected. Inboth provinces the social fabric is also highly diversified. TheBeafada (in Quinara) and the Nalu (in Tombali) are consideredlandlords who control access to land and management ofnatural resources. From the end of the nineteenth century,the Balanta migrated from the North in search of rice fieldsand became the major ethnic group, and the only one whichspecializes in mangrove swamp rice cultivation. Other groupswho mainly practice shifting cultivation also migrated to theSouth. Southern, like Northern Balanta, noted that woodedsavannahs around their settlements had been created throughthe protection and active planting of many useful wild trees(mainly C. pentandra, A. digitata and B. aethiopum).

Land tenure in rural Guinea-Bissau is broadly based on theright of any person or household to provide for their ownsustenance. Until around 1999, access to land by smallholderswas not controlled by the market, but exclusively by the headof the founding lineage in each locale, whether a village, achieftaincy, or a ‘spirit province.’ In general, every householdhead possessed permanent holding rights to given parcels ofland, which could be passed to descendents. Leasing is un-common, with the exception of the Manjak and the Pepel,whose kings have ‘chieftaincy lands’ that are frequentlyrented. Colonial and post-colonial laws recognized customaryland tenure and management systems. However, the absence

Fig. 4 Fruit production in dense agroforests of cola nuts, bananas andmangoes

Hum Ecol (2014) 42:217–230 221

until today of a villages’ territory cadastre opens the possibil-ity for the state to grant their land (especially fallows andforests) as concessions for industrial agriculture and logging,or to include them in parks and natural reserves. This hascaused growing insecurity among smallholders, and fruit treeplanting (mostly cashew trees) has been used to strengthenclaims to land.

About 15 % of the area of Guinea-Bissau is covered bynature reserves located along the coast and the islands, and thecountry is in the process of expanding the protected area byadding 8.8 % to be located in the Eastern hinterland (UNDP2011). The granting of logging concessions outside protectedareas, mainly to Chinese companies, is another factor thatserves as a disincentive to farmers’ protection of forests andrare flora species. Not only are companies given rights to cuttimber in fallows and village community forests, but alsoneither the state nor the companies conduct any reforestationactivities. In order to make Guinea-Bissau eligible foraccessing the opportunities made available by the emergentglobal carbonmarket, the project Carboveg-GB began in 2007and aimed to monitor deforestation (1990–2007) in particularand LUCC in general. Despite the use of remote sensingtechnologies, the spatial and spectral resolution of Landsatsatellite images and the trees’ classifiers made it impossible todistinguish woodlands from cashew orchards (www.carboveg-gb.dpp.pt), making it impossible to calculateaccurate rates of deforestation and forest degradation andrecent land-use changes.

The History of Cashew Introduction and Expansion

The precise date of cashew trees introduction in Guinea-Bissau in unknown. Bessa and Sardinha (1993: 142) arguethat seeds were brought from Benin and Mozambique. Thereare references to cashew trees in Cacheu in the eighteenthcentury, and in 1911, some colonial administrative posts inrural areas had small experimental cashew fields in order tostimulate its production by smallholders (Fernandes 1911: 4).

In the mid-1940s, cashew trees could be found all over thecountry on road verges, farming households were eating thenuts, and some started to use the cashew apple to producealcoholic beverages. Further, the colonial government decidedthat all administrative posts should sow 1 ha of cashews everyyear and distributed seeds to smallholders (Areal 1954:745).The growing North American demand for cashew nuts and thefavorable agro-ecological conditions of the territory increasedthe government’s interest in the crop (Areal 1954:745). At theend of the 1950s there was a consensus among colonialauthorities that cashews had the potential to take “a leadingrole in the agrarian and industrial development of Guinea”(Horta 1965:333). As early as 1954, one of the main colonialcompanies (Casa Gouveia) demanded support from the

government to create a cashew factory (Areal 1954:745; Hortaand Sardinha 1966:408).

By 1959, cashew trees were included in a reforestation plandue to their rusticity and high tolerance to drought and poorsoils (Horta 1965:333). During the mid-1960s, cashew plan-tations were recommended as a way to regenerate the soilsdegraded by continuous peanut cultivation and to contribute tothe diversification of agricultural production and exports (Sil-va 1963; Horta and Sardinha 1966:157). An ambitious planwas approved, which included the planting of 10,000 ha be-tween 1965 and 1967, and the creation of cashew processingfacilities (Horta 1965:409). However, by Independence rawcashew nuts exports were still at a minimum and the goal ofcreating a processing industry was not accomplished (JIU1972: 36).

After 1974 and until the liberalization of the economy inmid-1980s and the adoption of a structural adjustment pro-gram (SAP), the commercialization of rice, peanuts, palmkernels and cashew nuts was controlled by state stores andprices were fixed and very low (Temudo and Abrantes 2012).Consequently incentives to produce surplus were non-existent. Moreover, the mobilization of family labor and vil-lage age groups became increasingly difficult for under-capitalized household heads, resulting in chronic shortagesin rice production. The disincentive to rice production wasreinforced by post-SAP policies, aiming to boost cashew nutsproduction for exports, mainly through the bartering of cash-ew nuts for cheap imported rice (Temudo and Abrantes 2012).

Since the SAP there has been a wave of cashew nutadoption by small farmers and exports have been increasingsteadily (Fig. 5). In 1991, its value amounted to 70% of exportrevenues (Ribeiro and Miranda 1992: 14), and by 2009Guinea-Bissau was the world’s second largest exporter ofraw cashews and had the biggest per capita production(FAOSTAT 2012).

During the colonial period the vast majority of farmersattributed “no value” to the new cash crop, mainly introduced

1961

1963

1965

1967

1969

1971

1973

1975

1977

1979

1981

1983

1985

1987

1989

1991

1993

1995

1997

1999

2001

2003

2005

2007

2009

2011

0

20000

40000

60000

80000

100000

120000

140000

160000

Year

Ton

es

Fig. 5 Cashew nuts exports. Source: FAO STAT 2013

222 Hum Ecol (2014) 42:217–230

through village orchards using forced labor. Likewise, afterindependence, the state’s attempt to encourage more farmersto adopt cashew nuts was not immediately successful due to acombination of factors. Farmers’ testimonies during groupdiscussions in villages across the country highlighted manyreasons for the delayed adoption, including: (1) the late per-ception of the relative advantages of cashew production; (2)the lack of middlemen to buy the nuts and no means totransport them to urban centers; (3) many elders preventedcashew cultivation due to apparent competition in terms oflabor and land with food crops; (4) in some Tombali villages(Temudo 2012), Muslim elders (mostly Nalu) feared theirwomen would be tempted to exchange the fermented juicewith rice produced by non-Muslim Balanta (which was con-sidered a sin); (5) in the case of cattle herders, roaminganimals destroyed young cashew plants; (6) uncontrollednon-agricultural fires, which destroyed the cashew orchards;(7) in the South, the Balanta were mostly interested in man-grove rice production; they had reduced access to savannahwoodlands and to woodlands and they could obtain the cash-ew apples used to produce “wine” by working in the orchardsof their Muslim neighbors at harvest time or by exchangingtheir rice for cashew apple juice (before fermenting).

Adding to this broad picture were the histories of earlyadopters, who had been able to increase their wealth or theirwelfare at the time market prices were higher. A small numberof farmers started cultivating cashew nuts during the colonialperiod, when it was easy to exchange the cashew “wine” forlabor or for rice (and they were still in the process of conver-sion to Islam). Others were early adopters by chance, becausethey were living in the regions where the colonial state hadplanted cashew tree nurseries and big orchards (mainly Bissaucity area, Biombo and Cacheu administrative sectors andBolama island) and their villages were accessible to traders.Some farmers of Quinara region (Empada sector) took advan-tage from the fact that one international NGO (Humana Peo-ple to People, known in the country as ADPP) created aplantation in the 1980s and started providing agriculturaltraining at a time when a nearby juice and jam factory wasstill operating (in Bolama island). In the 1990s, the NGOmoved to Oio province in the North and established severalplantations, covering 750 ha of cashews today. The NGO hasalso provided training in cultivation techniques and cashewnut and apple processing, which explains the early spread ofcashew orchards and modern techniques (such as low densityplanting in lines, and pruning) used by many farmers in Oio.

All these factors led to quite varied adoption processes—and associated LUCC—across time and space (see Tables 2, 3and 4). In many villages the adoption of cashews took placeonly after the end of the civil war of 1998–1999. Even invillages that had orchards in 1998, it was only after the warthat the continuous process of expansion of the area occupiedby orchards began. In fact, prices rose until the late 1990s,

reaching their peak in 1999. During informal conversationsand group discussions many farmers also pointed to the factthat urban relatives and friends who had taken refuge asinternally displaced people (IDP) during the 11 months ofthe civil war, urged them to plant cashews. Some had evenasked for land to create their own orchards in the countryside.Also, in 1999 cashew merchants started entering the mostremote rural areas, triggering the development of an agricul-tural frontier. Other factors cited by farmers as contributing totheir cashew-orientation were the mounting costs of labor—elders frequently say that orchards act as a retirement pensionfor them—and climatic change. In fact, during group discus-sions farmers mentioned that the poor grain harvests duringrecent had been the result of a growing variability in thedistribution of the rainfall, especially the occurrence of longdry spells, as well as an increase in pests and diseases, and thedestruction by exceptionally high tides of the dykes protectingmangrove swamp rice fields.

The international price of cashew nuts has been in declinesince 1999, though in 2004 and 2008 it rose again due to poorharvests in several countries. These two price peaks generatedthe belief that the nuts can increase in value again, and farmerspersist in planting cashew trees when land is still available.However, the likelihood of better prices is low if the countrycontinues to export raw nuts. Much higher prices could beobtained if the nuts were processed before being exported, asGuinea-Bissau cashews are organic and rated as high quality(Lynn and Jaeger 2004).

In sum, as some key scholars of LUCC have pointed out(Lambin et al. 2001: 266), “Opportunities and constraints fornew land uses are created by markets and policies, increasing-ly influenced by global factors.” Nevertheless, changing eco-nomic conditions induce individual and social responses,which in turn are mediated by institutional factors. In otherwords, we need to understand the multifaceted and systemicways in which exogenous and endogenous factors interact(Keys and McConnell 2005: 322), how this interaction plays

Table 2 Cashew orchards introduction by decade (% of villages, n=260)

Region Province 1980s 1990s After 1999

East Bafatá 37 43 20

Gabu 21 65 14

Total 27 57 16

North Biombo 100 0 0

Cacheu 48 44 8

Oio 59 33 8

Total 58 35 7

South Quinara 55 38 7

Tombali 27 43 30

Total 39 40 21

Total 40 45 15

Hum Ecol (2014) 42:217–230 223

out differently in diverse temporal scales and the impact ofboth long-term processes and rapid momentaneous changes(Walker and Peters 2007).

The Development of Local Techniques and Their Impacton Lucc

Both during the colonial period and subsequent to indepen-dence, notwithstanding state efforts to spread cashew nutproduction no cultivation techniques were taught to farmers.Most current orchards were sown in a wide range of agro-ecological conditions, without proper selection of propagationmaterial, resulting in huge genetic and morphologic diversity(Bessa and Sardinha 1993). According to our interviewees,seeds were mostly obtained through informal channels.

Usually, two seeds are put in each hole and the distancebetween trees can be as close as 2 m, due to the probability ofpredation by squirrels. Older orchards were not thinned, andas a result the trees grew thin and tall and productivity is verylow. Despite recent changes in tree spacing—our interviewees(and our own field observations) indicated an average of5 m—orchards’ densities are still high in relation to the usualtechnical recommendations of 8 to 10 m between trees. None-theless, Lynn and Jaeger (2004: 5) concluded that “typicaldense Guinean cashew plantations may actually be moreproductive in kg of nuts per hectare than modern plantationswith spacing of 8 m or more between trees.”

According to informants and our own direct observations,the first orchards were planted in the less productive ferralsolsand in dry grasslands (mainly in the South) and savannahwoodlands, where the amount of labor needed to clear treesand undergrowth in the following years is reduced. At thesame time the price of cashew nuts began to increase, farmersstarted to expand their orchards into more favorable areas nearthe villages and along roads and trails. While they initiallyonly used less productive soils they later started to integratecashews into the cropping cycle (with peanuts and/or beans orcassava) after cereals had been produced in the first year.Later, farmers started to introduce cashews with cereals inthe first year of cultivation on newly cleared fallow land.Today the only exception to this procedure is in the East,where most farmers prefer to sow the cashews in the secondyear intercropped with peanuts, due to their different slash-and-burn techniques. Food crops can only be produced with

cashews for 3 to 4 years until the canopy of the trees closes.The traditional cropping sequence may also change, withpeanuts being the first crop sown together with cashews.According to farmers, the rationale behind peanuts used asthe first crop is because of their role in reducing both squirreldamage and weeding, as well as with accelerating the growthof the cashew trees by increasing soil fertility.

When the natural woody vegetation cover is dense (specif-ically in Tombali province) farmers may choose among sev-eral options of sowing cashews: (1) sowing subsequent toseveral years of food crop cultivation after soil exhaustion;(2) sowing in the first year after clearing using a high cashewplant density to reduce clearing during the following years; (3)sowing in the first year after clearing intercropping with foodand cash crops that generate revenue to help pay for clearingthe bush; and (4) sowing in former banana orchards destroyedby an unknown disease (the case in the Cubucaré peninsulasince 2005). These choices produce different results in termsof LUCC until the cashew orchard matures.

When a farmer needs to secure land tenure, but does nothave enough labor or capital to open an entire field, he maysow cashews directly in the woodlands with slight clearing ofvegetation around each plant. With the exception of Tombali,where dense forests demand much more effort to establish anorchard, limiting expansion of cashew orchards, new fields arecleared and food crops inter-planted with cashews over 3 to4 years, until an orchard is established. This process has givenrise to an agroforestry-agricultural frontier where food cropsand the new orchards are being established further and furtherfrom the villages, roads and trails.

In a survey of 99 villages, distributed across Guinea-Bissau, Camara (2007) found that 67 % of the farmersinterviewed had orchards with an area of between 1 and2 ha. Although it is likely that at present more farmers haveeven larger orchards, expansion is now slowing in manylocations after the price ratio dropped below 1 kg of cashewsto 1 kg of rice. Moreover, in villages where savannah wood-lands and woodlands are extremely limited, some farmershave started to treat their old orchards as a planted fallowand cleared them to cultivate cereals (Fig. 6).

Cashews are fire-sensitive evergreen trees. According toinformants, the expansion of cashew orchards has significant-ly changed practices associated with agricultural and non-agricultural fires—a major cause of carbon emissions andforest degradation especially in the East. Throughout the

Table 3 Decade of cashew or-chards introduction and adoptionby more than 50 % of the com-pounds (% of villages, n=75)

Village Ethnic Group 1980s 1990s After 1999

Start ≥ 50 % Start ≥ 50 % Start ≥ 50 %

Fulbe and Mandinga 32 3 53 44 15 53

Balanta 85 15 12 73 3 12

Total 61 9 31 60 8 31

224 Hum Ecol (2014) 42:217–230

Tab

le4

History

ofcashew

sexpansionandim

pacton

LUCC

Tim

eGoal

Global,natio

nal&

locald

rivers

Localconstraints

LUCC

Colonialera

1911–1950s

Economic

Governm

entp

olicies

Farm

ersresistance

Agriculturalexpansion

anddeforestation

inducedby

peanutscultivatio

nwerebig

intheEast,butcashewsim

pactwas

minim

umandscatteredacross

thecountry:

village

orchards

andedgeson

roads

Late1950s–1974

Economic&

Environmental

Governm

entp

olicies,international

demandforcashew

sFarm

ersresistance

&Anti-colonial

war

(1963–1974)

Cashewsim

pactwas

minim

umandscattered

across

thecountry:

village

orchards

andedges

onroads,statenurseriesandplantatio

ns.T

hewar

preventedabigger

impactof

cashew

scultivatio

nandallowed

afforestationdueto

areductionof

firesandthecultivatedarea

After

independence

1974–S

AP

Economic

Governm

entp

olicies,international

demandforcashew

s,accessibility

tothemarket,proxim

ityto

aprocessing

factory,oneNGOinterventio

n,perceived

interestby

somehouseholdheads

Lackof

interest(allgroups),land

shortage

&food

firstattitude

(SouthernBalanta),relig

ion

(Nalu),cattle

roam

ing(Fulaand

Mandinga);n

on-agriculturalfires

(mostly

FulaandMandinga);

poor

marketconditio

ns(allgroups)

Growingin

someregions,though

cashew

scultivatio

nremainedstill

scatteredacross

the

country.Mostly

onsavannah

woodlands

SAP–W

arEconomic

Governm

entp

olicies,internationald

emand,

householdlaborshortages,land

insecurity,

oneNGOinterventio

n,im

proved

marketconditio

ns

Idem

,but

loosingim

portance

Idem

,but

across

thecountrysomefarm

ers

startedto

introducecashew

sin

woodlands

usingapioneermodel

1999–2007

Economic

Governm

entp

olicies,internationald

emand,

householdlaborshortages,im

proved

market

conditions,land

insecurity,landmarket,

clim

ateandpoliticalinstability,logging,

IDPinfluence

Idem

,but

with

minuteim

portance

Fastdeforestationandagricultu

ralexpansion

dueto

conversion

into

cashew

orchards

ofvillage

savannah

woodlands

andwoodlands.

2008––

Economic

Internationalrisein

cereals’priceandreduction

incashew

nuts’price,householdlabor

shortages,land

insecurity,landmarket,

grow

ingperceptio

nof

clim

atechange,

logging,poor

governance

Decreasein

internationalp

rice

ofcashew

nutsandincrease

ofcereals

price,military

coup

in2012

and

consequent

decrease

infarm

-gateprices,local

merchants

bankruptcy,problem

satthe

shipping

portof

Bissau

Idem

,but

atthesametim

esomeoldest,less

productiv

eorchards

stoppedbeingcleared

(creatingafforestationdueto

invasion

ofwoodlandspecies)or,onthecontrary,som

efarm

ersstartslash

&burn

them

for

cereals’productio

n.Reductio

nof

mangrove

forests’area

toincrease

rice

productio

n

Hum Ecol (2014) 42:217–230 225

country, farmers have developed techniques to control wild fires,such as the use of fire breaks, burning fields against the windduring the morning or evening, and changes in hunting andhoney collection practices, among others. Consequently, cashewcultivation plays an important role in shaping the vegetationcover composition and its carbon sequestration potential.

Livelihood Changes and Their Impact on Lucc

From attributing “no value” to cashews, many farmers havebecome totally dependent on the revenues they generate, and

this has led to a reduction in other income-earning activities, adecrease in the use of family labor, and a neglect of staple-food production. There are a number of reasons for this: thenew economic opportunities created by international demandfor cashew nuts and post-SAP economic policies, increase inhousehold cash expenses after economic liberalization, andabove all labor shortages as a consequence of rural–urbanmigration, school attendance, and increased individualism.As local norms of solidarity and reciprocity faded and thepower of elders weakened, labor has become increasinglymonetarized (Temudo and Abrantes 2012).

Fruit trees are land-extensive and low labor-intensivecrops, therefore they are a good option in a context in whichland is available but labor is seasonally constrained (Keys andMcConnell 2005). Cashew production was promoted by thegovernment through a system of barter with rice, which startedat an exchange rate of 2 kg of cashew nuts for 1 kg of rice, butmoved during the 1990s in favor of cashews until by 1999 theexchange rate reversed.

During the years of high cashew market prices, many firstadopters were able to buy tin roofs for their houses (a majorgoal for farmers), bicycles and motorcycles, and even todiscontinue or drastically reduce cereal production and, inthe case of Fula and Mandinga farmers, to increase the useof wage labor (mainly with migrant workers from neighboringGuinea). Among the villages of our sample (n=75), 65 % ofthe Fula and Mandiga (n=34) and 27 % of Balanta (n=41)villages reported reduced food production as they could obtainrice through barter with cashew nuts. These data are consistentwith the relative number of months of cereal self-provisioningby both groups: an average of 4.3 months in Fula andMandinga (n=34) and of 7.6 in Balanta (n=41) villages.Among the latter, the average of cereal self-provisioning is6.7 months for Northern Balanta (n=27) and 9.6 months forSouthern Balanta (n=14), due to differences in land availabil-ity, soil fertility and rainfall.

The different attitudes of the Fula and Mandinga and theBalanta to cereal self-provisioning are longstanding. The Fulaand Mandinga are known for their relatively small cerealharvests and high peanut production associated with a cyclicallean season. Sufficiency in cereals depended upon the reve-nues obtained through small stock and peanut selling, tradingand seasonal youth migration. Common statements duringinformal conversations and group discussions were that “peo-ple have stopped working now,” or “even women do notproduce inland swamp rice when they or their husbands havea cashew orchard,” or even that “during the rainy season, thereare lots of people who only beg or do occasional work forothers to be able to feed themselves, but they do not slash anyfield or sow a single day!” In a few Fula and Mandingavillages of late adopters of cashew production, farmers de-clared that “cashews reduced seasonal hunger, as today we areslashing bigger fields in order to create orchards.” Contrary to

Fig. 6 Rice upland field cultivated after slashing and burning an oldcashew orchard

Fig. 7 Balanta farmers during cashews harvest: a man is separating thenuts from the apple and two women are pounding the cashew apples tomake wine

226 Hum Ecol (2014) 42:217–230

the more general opinion, in these few cases, farmers did notconsider cashew production increased “laziness.”

In contrast, the Balanta are well-known for their hard-working ethic, their skills in rice production and for beingthe only ethnic group that produces a regular surplus. How-ever, even among the Balanta, some interviewees hold theopinion that “cashew brought laziness,” since some peoplereduced rice production and significantly increased their con-sumption of alcohol (Lundy 2012). In Balanta villages wherepeople did not reduce rice production, farmers mentioned thatthe money, the rice and the “wine”2 obtained with cashewswere used to invest in rice production (paying and feedinglabor groups). As one farmer said “cashew [orchard] feeds themangrove rice field and the mangrove rice field feeds thecashew orchard.” In these cases, it is common to adopt a ricemanagement consumption strategy that privileges the highernutritional needs of hard work in peak times. Self-producedrice is eaten until the start of the cashew harvest, whenimported rice is obtained through exchange for cashews.When ploughing starts in the mangrove rice swamp paddies,the rest of the farmers’ own rice stock (considered morenutritious and filling than imported rice) is eaten.

Cashew nut prices started to decrease after 1999, and since2007 this drop has been accompanied by a rise in the price ofrice. Farmers with very big orchards and no or few remaininglands for food production just stopped clearing their old, lessproductive cashew orchards3 (Fig. 8). Those with too fewcashews to achieve rice sufficiency through exchange andwith no land reserves for food production adopted one oftwo food security strategies: Either they grew cereals onborrowed land where the landowners plant cashews withouthaving to clear it themselves or hire others to do so, or theycultivated cereals after clearing their own old orchards andintercropped them with new cashews. In villages where theintroduction of cashews took place late and land was stillplentiful, many farmers continued and even augmented cash-ew plantations, increasing cereal production at the same time.Besides increasing the production of cereals, some farmersdecided to invest in other fruit trees, mainly citrus, instead ofcashews, whereas others decided to set aside a “land reserve”for the production of food crops. In the case of the Balanta,increase in rice production is often achieved through openingnew fields in the mangroves—with obvious consequences interms of LUCC.4

The knowledge that cashew orchards can act as plantedfallows in the shifting cultivation cycle, and that their ashesproduce a good rice harvest, is now widespread amongGuinea-Bissau farmers. However, during the 2012 dry season,when most of the Fula and Mandinga farmers interviewedwere undergoing an acute food shortage, few decided to cleartheir cashew orchards to produce cereals. Coping strategiesadopted by many farmers include reducing food consumptionbelow nutritional needs, increasing sales of household assetsin order to buy cereals, and acquiring rice through loans givenby cashew merchants at high interest rates. Notwithstandingfood shortages, cashew nuts are not fully integrated intofarmers’ diets, despite their wide availability, easy storage(they are less prone to insects and fungi attacks than peanuts),and the lack of another protein source during large parts of theyear.

In sum, changes in livelihood conditions produced changesin land use decisions, in the face of new economic opportuni-ties. But these changes in land use in turn prompted newtransformations of livelihoods (Table 4).

Land Tenure and its Implications on Lucc

In Guinea-Bissau, cashew trees have been used as a landmarker especially since the mid-1990s. The land law and thecreation of parks in part triggered this process (Temudo 2012).Indeed, some property regimes may trigger the use of trees tosecure tenure, particularly under certain market conditions(Keys and McConnell 2005: 330; Fox et al. 2009: 311). But,the acceleration of cashew planting prompted a scramble forland and cashews became both the goal and the means ofclaiming land tenure. This process prompted major changes intraditional rules of access to land and a subsequent homoge-nization of the landscape.

2 For non-Muslim ethnic groups, such as the Balanta, cashew productionprovides two different sources of income: nuts and alcohol. The “cashewwine” made from the juice of the apple (Fig. 7) provides a larger incomethan the nuts in years of low prices (Lundy 2012).3 Alvarez and Naughton-Treves (2003:273) noted that these kinds ofprocesses of forest regrowth should be mapped and tracked in sustainableforest management practices, and conservation efforts should include therestoration of degraded areas.4 This decrease in the area occupied by mangroves since 2007 was con-firmed by remote sensing (Ana Cabral, personal communication, 2011).

Fig. 8 Old cashew orchard invaded by the natural vegetation cover afternot have been cleared for 2 years

Hum Ecol (2014) 42:217–230 227

Usually clearing provided permanent usufruct rights toland and it was on their own forest fallows that the majorityof farmers created orchards, although some exceptions ofmajor importance can be found in relation to cashew expan-sion. In some Fulbe villages, forest clearance did not givepermanent rights of usufruct to a parcel of land and after a fieldwas left in fallow anyone could occupy it. When cashewplantations started a quasi-open access to land rule prevailed,which enabled the first adopters to occupy as much of the landwith the best location as they wanted. But when the rush forland started, it was the harder working farmers and/or those(including women) with the biggest capacity to mobilize labor(either household or hired) who were able to create the largestorchards. In contrast, in some other locations some kings(régulos) took control of all of the vacant land for themselvesand their kin and clientele.

Among the Beafada in some parts of Quinara provincewithlittle forest area for shifting cultivation, farmers had no per-manent rights to fields located in woodlands. Every year it wasthe head of the founding lineage in each village who decidedwhich woodland(s) patch(s) the villagers could clear to producecereals. On the other hand, the savannahwoodland plots aroundthe compounds where peanuts were cultivated were given withpermanent usufruct rights that could be transmitted to descen-dents and these were the first areas to be planted with cashews.But when the land rush really started everybody tried to locateand claim rights to former slashed areas in the woodlands.

Among the Balanta, access and rights to upland fields werealso differentiated according to the specific history of land-usein each village. In old villages of the North where uplandfarming is still predominant, clearing gave permanent rights toland and when farmers started to plant cashews everyoneknew the exact borders of his fallow fields. In villages wherethe cropping system changed through time and upland cerealcultivation was abandoned or had been drastically reduced infavour of mangrove or freshwater swamp rice cultivation,cashew planting led to conflicts over land ownership. In bothcases, some landlords kept uncleared land for themselves,their relatives and/or for selling. In the Southern villages ofQuinara and Tombali provinces “upland fields had no owner”(due to open access rules) among the Balanta and could beappropriated either by men or women because farmers weremore interested in mangrove swamp rice cultivation. In fact,when the Balanta migrated to the South, in search of ricefields, they only asked the Nalu and Beafada landlords formangrove swamp land. When villages of other ethnic groupswere close by, there was little upland territory covered withsavannah woodlands or woodlands, and individual Balantahad to negotiate access to land via networks of friendship withthe neighbouring villages in order to increase/create theirorchards. Since the beginning of cashew orchard expansion,many tensions around land have arisen between the Balantaand other ethnic groups.

Until quite recently, neither the land nor wild trees could besold, only the labor invested to permanently transform them.This means a silk-cotton tree could not be sold but a canoecould; a fallow field could not be sold, as the forest would stillregenerate, but an orchard could as what was being sold werethe fruit trees planted and cared for; a mangrove forest couldnot be sold, only the rice paddies built after the clearing of themangrove trees and the construction of dikes. But even in thislast case among the Balanta, if the paddies had been sold to anon-relative, anyone belonging to the lineage of the firstowner was entitled to repurchase the fields by paying the samerelative price (in heads of cattle or tons of rice) even manydecades later. A true land market only developed with theadvance of the cashew agricultural frontier and the land short-age it created. In our sample (n=75 villages), land was boughtfor establishing orchards in 21 % of Fula/Mandinga villagesand in 24 % of Balanta villages. Among the Fula/Mandingathis process entailed the sale of village lands to urbanites.Among the Balanta severe land pressure mostly generatedland purchases in distant villages or in neighboring uplandones with forest reserves, usually of other ethnic groups, andland sales between farmers of the same village.

In sum, as other case studies have also showed (Geist andLambin 2002; Amanor and Pabi 2007;), tenure insecuritycontributed in some degree to land use-cover changes, andthese prompted major transformations in land tenure custom-ary rules.

Conclusions

The cashew agricultural frontier in Guinea-Bissau is the out-come of complex and interconnected changes occurring at thelocal, national and global levels to which social, cultural,political-economic and environmental factors contributed invarious degrees across different times and regional scales. Asother case studies have highlighted (e.g., Lambin et al. 2001;Geist and Lambin 2002; Amanor and Pabi 2007; Hecht andSaatchi 2007), population increase alone does not account forland use changes.

Colonial and post-colonial aims to increase export reve-nues have been achieved, but the costs in terms of foodsecurity and biodiversity are high. Food insecurity and indebt-edness are growing as a result of the combined effects of areorientation of the farming systems towards cashew produc-tion and dependence upon the market for food supply, as wellas the consequences of climate change and of increased use ofcredit to mitigate pre-harvest food shortages. In addition,farmers’ engagement in multiple land uses has been reduced,along with their ability to respond quickly to either calamitiesor new opportunities. Complex agroecological matrixes com-bining different vegetation cover types, diverse agriculturalfields corresponding to different cropping systems and the

228 Hum Ecol (2014) 42:217–230

successional forests of fallow fields are now being convertedinto simple agroforests of cashew trees interspersed with a fewtrees of other species. Thus, agroforestry agricultural intensi-fication, instead of allowing for the stabilization of the culti-vated area, is entailing the destruction of more sustainable andbiodiversity rich mosaic-like landscapes which existed undershifting cultivation practices. Further, by rendering low-laborintensive agriculture lucrative, cashew plantations prompted ascramble for land by both rural and urban actors and increasedpressure upon the remaining woody patches. The resultingprivatization and commoditization of land had negative socialand environmental consequences.

Nevertheless, small farmers in Guinea-Bissau have con-verted from shifting cultivation into an agroforestry alterna-tive. This transformation is not irreversible and in response tochanges in national and international prices of both cerealsand cashew nuts, farmers are following two divergent adjust-ment pathways. They are also starting to perceive that therapid land use cover changes described above have manyperverse consequences, and this could be a major opportunityto introduce reforestation measures in old cashew orchardsand to protect remaining woodlands. However, communityforests created in Guinea-Bissau by non-governmental actorswere also degraded by logging companies authorized bycorrupt state officers, who also tax trees planted by farmerswhen they cut them. The creation of parks and nature reservesis also perceived by farmers as a potential loss of rights andlack of benefits (Temudo 2012). The national institutionalenvironment, then, constitutes a major constraint upon thewillingness of farmers to adopt reforestation or even reduceddeforestation and forest degradation measures and to acceptthe creation of new protected areas.

Acknowledgments Research in 2008 and 2009 was conducted withinthe framework of the project Carboveg-GB funded by the Guinea-Bissauand Portuguese governments, and by grants from the Portugal-AfricaFoundation. In 2011 and 2012 fieldwork was continued under the frame-work of PTDC/AFR/111546/2009 and PTDC/AFR/1117785/2010 pro-jects. The authors wish to thank comments made by Rosemary Galli,Deborah Bryceson, José Miguel Pereira, Joana Sousa, João Silva, JoanaRoque de Pinho, Jean-Louis Couture, Luís Catarino, Elizabeth Challinor,Duarte Oom and especially by one HE reviewer. The first author alsothanks the Department of Anthropology of Yale University/USA and theTechnology and Agrarian Development Group of WageningenUniversity/Holland for hosting her as a Visiting Fellow during earlierphases of the research.

References

Aiyelaagbe, I. (1994). Fruitcrops in the cashew-coconot system of Kenya:their use, management and agroforestry potential. AgroforestrySystems 27: 1–16.

Alvarez, N., and Naughton-Treves, L. (2003). Linking national agrarianpolicy to deforestation in the Peruvian Amazon: A case study ofTambopata 1986–1997. Ambio 32(4): 269–274.

Amanor, K., and Pabi, O. (2007). Space, time, rhetoric and agriculturalchange in the transition zone of Ghana. Human Ecology 35: 51–67.

Areal, J. (1954). Possibilidades industriais da Guiné. Boletim Cultural daGuiné Portuguesa 36: 707–770.

Bernard, H. (2006). Research methods in anthropology. Altamira Press,Lanham.

Bessa, A., and Sardinha, R. (1993). O melhoramento do cajueiro naGuiné-Bissau. Comunicações (IICT) 13: 141–151.

Camara, S. (2007). Estudo Sobre a Cadeia de Caju. SNV, Bissau.Carreira, A. (1962). População autóctone segundo os recenseamentos para

fins fiscais. Boletim Cultural da Guiné Portuguesa 66: 221–280.Catarino, L. (2004). Fitogeografia da Guiné-Bissau. Lisbon: ISA/UTL.

PhD dissertation.Catarino, L., Martins, E., Pinto Basto, M., and Diniz, M. (2008). An

annotated checklist of the vascular flora of Guinea-Bissau (WestAfrica). Blumea 53: 1–222.

Cramb, R., Colfer, C., Dressler, W., Laungaramsri, P., Le, Q.,Mulyoutami, E., Peluso, N., and Wadley, R. (2009). SwiddenTransformations and Rural Livelihoods in Southeast Asia. HumanEcology 37: 323–346.

Departamento Central de Recenseamento (1981). Recenseamento Geralda População e da Habitação de 1979: resultados provisórios. RGB,Bissau.

FAO-ISRIC-ISSS (1998). World Reference Base for Soil Resources.World Soil Resources Report 84. Food and AgricultureOrganization, Rome.

FAO STAT (2012). http://faostat.fao.org/site/342/default.aspx . Accessedon 25 October 2012.

Fernandes, J. A. C. (1911). Relatório da residência de Buba. BoletimOficial da Guiné (Annex).

Fox, J., Fujita, Y., Ngidang, D., Peluso, N., Potter, L., Sakuntaladewi, N.,Sturgeon, J., and Thomas, D. (2009). Policies, political-economyand swidden in Southeast Asia. Human Ecology 37: 305–322.

Geist, H. J., and Lambin, E. F. (2002). Proximate causes and underlyingdriving forces of tropical deforestation. BioScience 52(2): 143–150.

Hecht, S., and Saatchi, S. (2007). Globalization and forest resurgence:changes in forest cover in El Salvador. Bioscience 57: 663–672.

Horta, A. (1965). Análise estrutural e conjuntural da economia da Guiné.Boletim Cultural da Guiné-Portuguesa 20(80): 333–496.

Horta, C., and Sardinha, R. (1966). A indústria transformadora na GuinéPortuguesa: problemas e perspectivas. Boletim Cultural da GuinéPortuguesa 21(82): 141–163.

INEC (1996). Recenseamento geral da população e habitação 1991.Ministério do Plano e Cooperação Internacional, Bissau.

INEC (2009). Recenseamento Geral da População e Habitação.Ministério do Plano e Cooperação Internacional, Bissau.

Jalloh, A., Roy-Macauley, H., and Sereme, P. (2011). Major agro-ecosystems of West and Central Africa: Brief description, speciesrichness, management, environmental limitations and concerns.Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment doi:10.1016/j.agee.2011.11.019.

JIU (1959). Censo da população de 1950: Província da Guiné. JIU,Lisboa.

JIU (1972). Prospectiva do desenvolvimento económico e social daGuiné. JIU, Lisboa.

Keys, E., and McConnell, W. J. (2005). Global change and the intensifi-cation of agriculture in the tropics. Global Environmental Change15: 320–337.

Lambin, E. F., and Meyfroidt, P. (2011). Global land use change, eco-nomic globalization, and the looming land scarcity. PNAS 108(9):3465–3472.

Lambin, E., Turner, B., Geist, H., Agbola, S., Angelsen, A., Bruce, J.,Coomes, O., Dirzo, R., Fischer, G., Folke, C., George, P.,Homewood, K., Imbernon, J., Leemans, R., Li, X., Moran, E.,Mortimore, M., Ramakrishnan, P., Richards, J., Skanes, H.,Steffen, W., Stone, G., Svedin, U., Veldkamp, T., Vogel, C., and

Hum Ecol (2014) 42:217–230 229

Xu, J. (2001). The causes of land-use and land-cover change:moving beyond myths. Global Environmental Change 11: 261–269.

Leach, M., and Fairhead, J. (2000). Challenging neo-Malthusian defor-estation analyses in West Africa’s dynamic forest landscapes.Population and Development Review 26(1): 17–43.

Lynn, S. and Jaeger, P. (2004). Guinea-Bissau cashew sector developmentstudy. Repport for the Private Sector Rehabilitation and DevelopmentProject (PSRDP), funded by the World Bank. http://www.hubrural.org/IMG/pdf/bissau_cashew_rap-04.pdf. Accessed on 20.12.2011.

Lundy, B. (2012). Playing the market: how the cashew “commodityscape”is redefining Guinea-Bissau’s countryside. CAFE 34(1): 33–52.

Mertz, O., Padoch, C., Fox, J., Cramb, R. A., Leisz, S. J., Lam, N.T., and Vien, T. D. (2009). Swidden change in Southeast Asia:understanding causes and consequences. Human Ecology 37:259–264.

Morton, D., DeFries, R., Shimabukuro, Y., Anderson, L., Arai, E., BonEspirito-Santo, F., Freitas, R., and Morisette, J. (2006). Croplandexpansion changes deforestation dynamics in the southern BrazilianAmazon. Proceedings from the National Academy of Science103(39): 14637–14641.

Palm, C., Vosti, S., Sanches, P., and Ericksen, P. (2005). Slash-and-burnagriculture: the search for alternatives. Columbia University Press,New York.

Perfecto, I., and Vandermeer, J. (2010). The agroecological matrix as analternative to the land-sparing/agricultural intensification model.PNAS 107(13): 5786–5791.

Pollini, J. (2009). Agroforestry and the search for alternatives to slash-and-burn cultivation: from technological optimism to a political

economy of deforestation. Agriculture, Ecosystems andEnvironment 133: 48–60.

Radel, C., Schmook, B., and Chowdhury, R. (2010). Agricultural liveli-hood transition in the southern Yucatán region: diverging paths andtheir accompanying land changes. Regional Environmental Change10: 205–218.

Ribeiro, R., and Miranda, M. (1992). O mercado fronteiriço e a balançacomercial da Guiné-Bissau (1990-1991). Situação e perspectivas.INEP, Bissau.

Silva, H. (1963). Plano de desenvolvimento da cultura do cajueiro naGuiné Portuguesa. MEAU, Informação, 50.

Temudo, M. P. (2012). “The white men bought the forests”: conservationand contestation in Guinea-Bissau, West Africa’. Conservation andSociety 10(4): 354–366.

Temudo, M. P., and Abrantes, M. (2012). Changing policies, shiftinglivelihoods: the fate of agriculture in Southern Guinea-Bissau.Journal of Agrarian Change 13(4): 571–589.

Turner, B. L., and Robbins, P. (2008). Land-change science and politicalecology: similarities, differences, and implications for sustainabilityscience. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 33: 295–316.

UNDP (2011). PRODOC. Support to the Consolidation of a ProtectedArea System in Guinea-Bissau’s Forest Belt. http://www.gw.undp.org/documents%20update%202012/PRODOC_Guinea%20Bissau%20PA%20System_FINAL.pdf . Accessed on 24.10.2012.

Walker, P., and Peters, P. E. (2007). Making sense in time: remote sensingand the challenges of temporal heterogeneity in social analysis ofenvironmental change—cases from Malawi. Human Ecology 35:69–80.

230 Hum Ecol (2014) 42:217–230