This part seeks to explain the trends and patterns identified in Part Five and to explore their implications. The basic process in the making of a cocoa-based economy was the application of labour to land to create fixed capital. The organization of each of the next two chapters, on land and capital, follows the stages of the tree-farm cycle: from establishment, through maturity, to the consequences of the longevity of cocoa trees. In doing so, we examine the emergence of a recognisably contemporary ‘less-developed’ economy, and reflect on the problems involved for participants and observers. These include the long-running controversy over colonial ‘failure’ to introduce compulsory land titling, and the beginnings of a historic transition towards land scarcity: the latter creating possible opportunities for the capture of economic rents by those who control access to land, and the problem of finding rules to reconcile the interests of living individuals with those of society as a whole and of future generations. On the perennial controversy over agricultural indebtedness we inquire into the competitiveness of credit markets, and the social implications of the specific institutions involved. In this matrilineal society, we examine the dynamics of female cocoa-farming, and consider the legal and social struggles over the rights of divorced and widowed women, and their children, to shares in their husbands' cocoa farms. The shifts in property rights and factor markets had profound consequences for the ways in which chiefs sought to maintain their economic position within Asante society.