ABSTRACT In response to the challenges of using traditional farming practices and in order to boost smallholder productivity on sustainable basis, many civil society organizations, NGOs and international donor agencies including USAID, under the auspices of its Agriculture Development and Value-Chain Enhancement (ADVANCE) project, has initiated many intervention programmes geared towards the development and dissemination of Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs). The study aimed at identifying t...
ABSTRACT Land degradation, unreliable rainfall, population growth and chronic poverty in subSaharan Africa challenge the sustainability of soil fertility, crop yields and general livelihoods (food security) for smallholder farmers. Several soil fertility management interventions have been introduced to farmers in groups over the years, but different levels of uptake, determinants and socio-economic effects have been reported in separate studies. However, the determining role of social networ...
ABSTRACT Low output of cocoa has resulted in Ghana losing out to Cote d‟Ivoire as the leading producer. The aim of this study was to explore farm households‟ adoption of inorganic fertilizer and technical efficiency, using cross-sectional data collected from 305 cocoa producing households in the Western Region of Ghana. The Heckman two-stage model was used for both the discrete decision to adopt fertilizer and intensity of fertilizer use while the stochastic frontier framework was used t...
ABSTRACT This study assesses consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for safer vegetables in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. A semi-structured questionnaire was administered to 350 vegetable consumers selected through a multi stage sampling procedure from ten districts of the capital city, Ouagadougou. Descriptive statistics was used in identifying the mean Willingness to Pay (MWTP). Ordered probit and Multinomial logit were used to estimate the factors influencing consumers’ WTP and consumers’...
ABSTRACT Stable and affordable food commodity prices are important for food security. Higher food prices reduce a family‟s expenditure on other life sustaining expenditures such as health and education. In 2007/8, the world experienced an unexpected rise in both food commodity prices and fuel (petroleum products) prices, which drew the attention of world leaders and researchers. The effect of this continues increases in gasoline prices on the price of maize have implications for Ghanaians ...
ABSTRACT This study aims to contribute to a better understanding of the possible causes of production volatility that has characterized rice production in the Greater Accra and Volta Regions of Ghana. The output gap that exists between actual yield and achievable yield presents an opportunity for output growth. Using cross sectional data, this study presents an empirical analysis of production risk and technical efficiency of 356 irrigated rice farms from the two regions. This study adopts t...
ABSTRACT National data on post-harvest loss of mango fruits is estimated to be between 20% to 60%. This constitutes a huge financial loss to all actors. The major obstacles in dealing with this challenge are little knowledge of the nature of the marketing channels, absence of exact estimates, stages along the marketing channel where the losses occur as well as the socio-economic factors that lead to the losses. The study assessed the nature of the marketing channel, estimated losses at each ...
ABSTRACT This study presents an analysis of spatial price transmission and market integration of major maize markets in Ghana over the period 1995-2013. Monthly wholesale maize prices for the various markets were used for the analysis. The Augmented-Dickey Fuller test was used to test for the stationarity of individual price series and was confirmed by the KPSS test. All the price series data that were used tested for Unit Root. They were found to be non-stationary at levels but stationary a...
Abstract Maize, the most important cereal in Ghana, is consum ed in alm ost all parts of the country. To ensure food security in Ghana, adequate availability of m aize m ust be ensured. However, w hether or not farm ers should devote their resources to the production of more maize is a question to be addressed. Since food security has more to do with availability than with production or self-sufficiency in the product, it was necessary to investigate w hether it is better for farm ers to gro...
The need to increase and sustain the production of cowpea in Ghana has been recognised. It is a cheaper source of protein and thus has the potential to alleviate protein malnutrition. Specifically, the study determines the various storage and preservation technologies that are known n and/or used by cowpea farmers, the profitability of cowpea preservation by means of the newly introduced technology called the hydrothermal treatment technology, and also identifies the characteristics tha...
The study analyses the effect of the socio-economic determinants on diversification behaviour of cocoa producers herein referred to as ‘producers, ’ in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. The Logit model was employed in the study, which identifies the reasons for diversification into other perennial and annual crops, animal production and off-farm activities. The constraints faced by producers in diversifying, as ranked by the producers, are also analysed. Three hundred and four producers ...
ABSTRACT The production of sorghum, one of the most important food crops with multiple uses in the savanna zone of Ghana, has been bedevilled with several problems. The most important ' problems are low yields, lack of improved varieties and striga infestation. These problems led to research efforts at the Savanna Agricultural Research Institute to produce improved high yielding sorghum varieties that are adapted to the socio-economic and agroecological conditions of northern Ghana. This stud...
ABSTRACT Zero Energy Cool Chamber (ZECC) storage technology is the use of an evaporative cool chamber for maintaining the low temperature of fruits and vegetables compared to the field, shed and room temperature. In order to help farmers and traders, the ZECC technology was introduced in the Savelugu and Sagnarigu municipalities. However, only a few of the farmers and traders have adopted it in these municipalities. Although the ZECC seems to be a means to help solve storage challenges, the ...
The Problem The existence of a Mechanical Cultivation Scheme for the past 20 years in Sierra Leone has not enabled that country to increase rice production enough to eliminate imports of rice, nor has it had the effect of materially reducing the costs of production. The success of mechanization in many other countries at least suggests that some factors are operating in them which, up to this time, have not been achieved in Sierra Leone. The purpose of this investigation is to carefully study...
ABSTRACT Over the last 60 years, a series of interventions geared towards increasing oil palm output have been initiated by the Government. Recent major Government interventions are the expansion of the seednuts production capacity of the Oil Palm Research Institute (OPRI) from 2 million to 5 million seednuts per year, the President‟s Special Initiative on Oil Palm and the Oil Palm Master Plan. The oil palm sector is dominated by small-scale producers who have low productivity as a result o...