State policies and smallholders politics in Ghana’s agriculture ‘Modernization’ paradigm: a policy review

State interventions are drivers of agrarian change around the world. In Ghana, scholarly attention on agrarian change and policy evolution has primarily focused on historical changes, leaving gaps in understanding contemporary policy dynamics. Hence, we conducted a qualitative thematic review of all National Medium-term Development Plans (MTDPs) and agriculture sector-focused policy documents in the Millenium (n = 6) to discuss how state policies interact with smallholder dynamics. We reveal the government’s perpetuation of the 20th-century modernization agenda—which drives agricultural practices and outcomes toward the imaginary standards of developed countries. This persistent agenda, we argue, is explicitly capitalist and productivist in ideals as it is built on (1) commercialization, market integration, and private engagements, (2) expansion and transitioning away from smallholdings towards medium/large-scale farming, and (3) intensifications of varied sorts. Pursuing this uncritical modernization partly supports and could potentially renew small-scale farming—through enhanced productivity, efficiencies, climate change resilience, and gender empowerment—but it also exposes vulnerable farmers to the rigours of the neoliberal capitalist structures. Ultimately, the restructuring of agriculture, deepening inequalities, and detachments from local socio-ecological values that emanate from this modernization are to smallholders’ detriment. Hence, though this trajectory may be well-intentioned, the politics of contrasting outcomes leave the smallholder in a dilemma, confused and uncertain about their place in today’s agriculture and into the future. The paper thus emphasizes why policy values and interventions must be evaluated on their immediate and long-term impacts on smallholders’ structures and values.