The agricultural landscape of the savannah region of Côte d’Ivoire looks very different today than it did just twenty years ago. The most significant change has been the expansion of cashew orchards and the relative decline in cotton area. This paper seeks to explain this agricultural transformation by examining farmers’ decision-making within the broader political economy and history of agricultural development in the region. The research combines quantitative and qualitative research methods at multiple scales to understand the dynamics of this agrarian change. I hypothesise that contrasting market structures and producer prices in the cotton and cashew sectors account for much of this change in the agricultural economy and landscape.