Conference Agenda

Over the past two decades, the expansion of artisanal gold mining, driven by a dramatic rise in global gold prices, has had significant socio-economic and environmental consequences in gold-rich regions. In Ghana, where gold rich regions overlap with cocoa-producing areas, tensions have emerged between informal and often illegal gold miners and local cocoa-producing communities over land use and the externalities associated with mining. We hypothesize that the proximity to and intensity of informal gold mining negatively affects cocoa productivity and profitability. Competition over resources such as land and labour as well as environmental degradation associated with mining may undermine agricultural productivity. To test this hypothesis, we combine two unique datasets, namely representative primary household data from cocoa producers and geo-spatial information on informal mining activities in cocoa-growing regions, to explore the relationship of artisanal mining and cocoa producers’ agricultural production outcomes in Ghana. Given the spatial dependence of our data, we apply a spatial econometric model, which reveals a negative association between mining proximity and intensity and cocoa yield, cocoa revenue and cocoa profit. By assessing potential impact pathways, we find that labour dynamics may explain part of these production outcomes near mine sites, where mining jobs with higher wages attract workers away from agriculture.