Responsible scaling for sustainable intensification: Dimensions of land rights and farmer realities in Northern Ghana

Despite efforts to promote Sustainable Intensification (SI) in northern Ghana, adoption remains uneven due to interacting constraints such as farm-level constraints, limited resources, lack of institutional support, and land tenure issues, which influence farmers’ willingness and ability to engage in SI. The paper assesses how different land tenure modes are locally understood and experienced within the different pathways of use rights that farmers may derive tenure (in)security in their engagement in Sustainable Intensification in northern Ghana. Moving beyond binary notions of land tenure security, the analysis applies the Theory of Access to examine how socially embedded rights, obligations, and recognition structure farmers’ ability to invest in land. The study draws on qualitative evidence from participatory rural appraisal tools, including matrix ranking, focus group discussions, and key informant interviews. The findings indicate that farmers begin by evaluating the land itself, that is, its transfer rights, collateral ability, dispute possibilities, and the extent to which use rights are socially recognized, even before deciding whether and how to engage with Sustainable Intensification (SI) practices. Even where land was held under relatively secure arrangements, including plots with formal title deeds, farmers were reluctant to use land as collateral for formal credit. This reluctance stemmed primarily from heightened climate uncertainty, including rainfall variability, drought risk, and the possibility of crop failure, which made the prospect of losing land through loan default unacceptable. In this context, SI investments were more commonly financed through informal support systems such as kin-based lending and rotating labor and savings associations. Long-term practices, such as agroforestry, were intentionally avoided on conditionally accessed lands, as tree planting was widely interpreted as an implicit ownership claim that could invite disputes or land withdrawal. Where women’s access to land was conditional on marital and childbearing status, incentives to undertake long-term investments were further reduced. Overall, farmers' engagement in SI requires not only technical adaptation but institutional sensitivity, recognizing that the sustainability of SI also depends on the alignment between innovation characteristics and the rights through which farmers engage with land.