Analyses of Nigeria's adjustment experience have emphasised three main issues, namely, federal government dominance of reform processes; the macro-economic components and impact of the structural adjustment programme (SAP); and social responses to economic reform. Much illustrative material has been drawn also from the agricultural and rural sector, reflecting the locus of SAP-induced policy change in Nigeria. Less apparent in the available literature has been the place of state governments in the adjustment process. Also lacking is a historical perspective on the social infrastructure of étatism in rural society – official and quasi-official groupings of peasants, traders and rural dwellers.

This article examines continuity and change in farmer organisation in Nigeria's cocoa belt since the 1930s. Locating agricultural politics in Ondo State since the 1970s within this historical context, the article analyses the advent and operations of the Ondo State Farmers' Congress (OSFC), supposedly a ‘farmers' lobby’ established by the local state in 1988. Congress operations, it is shown, illustrate Nigeria's tradition of ‘top-down’ policy-making on agriculture and rural development. But Congress was also inaugurated about the same time as étatism was being dismantled. Congress's existence thus highlights critical issues in the design of SAP, the structure of policy-making on Nigeria agriculture, and the continuing debate on state–market conjunctures in Africa's economic development.