From Cocoa to Gold: What’s at Stake: When classical agrarian theory points to rising food prices as the driver of land value, it assumes a single, agricultural use for land. David Ricardo’s rent model is a good example: more demand for corn raises the returns to fertile land and—because the soil’s productive capacity is essentially fixed—landowners capture higher rents. But in many contemporary rural landscapes this model misses a crucial detail: land is multi‑functional. Productive cocoa farms in Ghana—particularly in the Western North, Ashanti, Bono, and Eastern regions—sit atop significant gold deposits, creating a conflict between agriculture and mining. Read more