Iddrisu, A.Y.Yaro, J.A.Ouma, S.2024-06-062024-06-062022https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2022.2135423http://ugspace.ug.edu.gh:8080/handle/123456789/42166Research ArticleCommercialization via value-chain agriculture, under which small farmers often Collaborating with big companies has become a prominent development strategy across Africa. Often framed in win-win terms, the dark sides of such projects (e.g. project failures and related losses are often sidelined in both academic and practitioner discourses on agricultural commercialization. Informed by a collaborative ethnography of a failed value-chain agriculture project in Ghana, this paper seeks to contribute to a better understanding of how farmers, agribusiness companies and development organizations engage with and shape commercialization processes, and how those most affected—farmers and their communities—experience often risky and conflict-prone ventures. In contrast to the win-win-rhetoric adopted by funders and corporations partners in such projects, we foreground the uneven distribution of risk and sacrifices and losses between farmers, communities, and corporate partners; the socially and materially disruptive nature of commercialization projects for host communities; and the clashes between a planner’s view of the world and the environmental realities of commercialization.encontract farmingagrarian changeAfricaArticle