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Article
Publication date: 28 February 2023

Paul Kwame Nkegbe, Abdelkrim Araar, Benjamin Musah Abu, Yazidu Ustarz, Hamdiyah Alhassan, Edinam Dope Setsoafia and Shamsia Abdul-Wahab

Ghana's economy is largely agrarian, and the business of agriculture is dominated by smallholder farmers who are predominantly rural dwellers. As a result, efforts to lift rural…

Abstract

Purpose

Ghana's economy is largely agrarian, and the business of agriculture is dominated by smallholder farmers who are predominantly rural dwellers. As a result, efforts to lift rural farming households from poverty have been narrowed to the promotion of agricultural development to the neglect of the rural non-farm sector. However, this is fast changing in the advent of a burgeoning rural nonfarm economy and must engage the attention of policy actors. This study thus assesses the effect of non-farm participation on households' level of commercialization of agricultural crops in Ghana.

Design/methodology/approach

The study applies a generalized structural equation model (GSEM) to the Ghana Living Standards Survey round 6 dataset, a stratified and nationally representative random sample of 16,772 households in 1,200 enumeration areas.

Findings

This study finds that non-farm participation increases the produce sold to output ratio. It is concluded that non-farm engagement by farmers boosts commercialization in Ghana. Thus, for the Ghanaian and similar contexts, agricultural development interventions that incorporate non-farm activities are more likely to be successful in improving livelihoods.

Research limitations/implications

The study uses only the ratio of sales value to output value definition for commercialization and acknowledges use of multiple definitions could be superior.

Originality/value

Various empirical studies have examined the link between the farm and nonfarm sectors. This paper is original in its approach as it tackles an aspect of the subject that has been understudied, namely, an exploration of nonfarm and farm linkages from the perspective of agricultural commercialization.

Details

Journal of Agribusiness in Developing and Emerging Economies, vol. 14 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2044-0839

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 30 August 2018

Paul Kwame Nkegbe

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between credit access and technical efficiency of smallholder crop farmers in northern Ghana.

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between credit access and technical efficiency of smallholder crop farmers in northern Ghana.

Design/methodology/approach

The study uses a random sample of 445 farming households in the three northern regions of Ghana. The two-stage double bootstrap DEA approach was used to consistently estimate technical efficiency scores as well as the determinants.

Findings

The results revealed that, given the current technology, there is substantial yield or productivity gap among the sample of producers in northern Ghana used for the study. This is because producers can reduce input use by over 50.0 percent while still achieving the same output levels. It is further revealed that proportion of household income from off-farm activities, distance of farm from homestead, location and credit access are significant determinants of technical efficiency.

Originality/value

The current study differs from previous studies in two basic ways. First, it takes into account the fact that smallholder farmers practise mixed or inter-cropping by using value of output so that various crops on a given plot of the farmer can be aggregated; and second, a nonparametric approach is adopted so that the inherent inconsistencies in using the two-step model within a parametric framework can be avoided.

Details

Agricultural Finance Review, vol. 78 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0002-1466

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 6 November 2017

Samuel Sekyi, Benjamin Musah Abu and Paul Kwame Nkegbe

The purpose of this paper is to examine farmers’ access to credit, credit constraint, and productivity in the Northern Savannah ecological zone of Ghana.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine farmers’ access to credit, credit constraint, and productivity in the Northern Savannah ecological zone of Ghana.

Design/methodology/approach

Secondary data from the Ghana Feed the Future baseline survey involving a total sample of 2,968 farm households were used. The conditional mixed process (CMP) framework was applied to estimate access to credit, credit constraint, and productivity simultaneously. As a system estimator the CMP corrects for possible heterogeneity and sample selection bias.

Findings

The results from the estimations revealed that age, literacy, farm non-mechanized equipment, and group membership were the variables influencing farmers’ access to credit. Credit constraint conditions were determined by household size, locality, group membership, and household durable assets. Finally, the results showed that productivity of farmers was dependent on marital status, household size, locality, farm size, commercialization, farm mechanized equipment, group membership, and household durable assets.

Originality/value

This paper is the first, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, to use the CMP framework to jointly estimate access to credit, credit constraint, and productivity. The results indicate that estimating credit access and constraint models separately would have yielded biased estimates. Thus, this paper informs future research on farmers’ credit access, credit constraint, and productivity for informed policymaking.

Details

Agricultural Finance Review, vol. 77 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0002-1466

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 20 November 2017

Adam Iddrisu, Isaac Gershon Kodwo Ansah and Paul Kwame Nkegbe

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of input credit on smallholder farmers’ output and income using Masara N’Arziki support project in Northern Ghana.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of input credit on smallholder farmers’ output and income using Masara N’Arziki support project in Northern Ghana.

Design/methodology/approach

A cross-sectional primary data set was used to estimate the effect of project participation on farm output, yield and income using propensity score matching (PSM) methods.

Findings

The findings are that project participation is skewed towards experienced farmers with big-sized households and farms. The effect of project on outcomes is somewhat unsatisfactory in the sense that participation only raises output and yield, but not income.

Research limitations/implications

The paper only examined the project effect on farm outcomes among smallholder farmers participating in the programme in just one operational area in the Northern region. Future research should consider all the operational areas for an informed generalisation of findings.

Practical implications

Greater benefits to farmers from programme participation would require project management to review the contractual arrangement so that the high cost of input credit is significantly reduced.

Originality/value

The paper applied the PSM to estimate the effect of project participation on farm output, yield and income among smallholder farmers which is non-existent in the literature on the study area, at least as far as we know. This paper can inform future policy on the direction and nature of support for smallholder farmers in Northern Ghana.

Details

Agricultural Finance Review, vol. 78 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0002-1466

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 18 December 2019

Samuel Sekyi, Paul Bata Domanban and George Kwame Honya

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of informal credit access on agricultural productivity in rural Ghana.

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of informal credit access on agricultural productivity in rural Ghana.

Design/methodology/approach

Data sets from the Ghana Feed the Future baseline survey involving a total sample of 2,437 rural farm households were used. In order to address the problem of endogeneity and sample selectivity bias, the endogenous switching regression (ESR) model was employed to examine whether rural farm households’ with access to informal credit and those without access differ in terms of their productivity levels and whether access to informal credit affects agricultural productivity.

Findings

Estimates from the ESR show that access to informal credit significantly promotes agricultural productivity. Specifically, farmers with access to informal credit were able to achieve a yield of 48.42 kg/ha more than their counterparts without informal credit access. In terms of the counterfactual, farmers without informal credit access would have increased their yield by 57.61 kg/ha if they were to have access to informal credit.

Research limitations/implications

The study was restricted to the savannah ecological zone of Ghana. This limits the extent of generalisation of results.

Originality/value

This study provides a rigorous econometric analysis of the impacts of access to informal credit on agricultural productivity in rural Ghana. The study contributes to the current debate on the link between access to informal credit and agricultural productivity and provides valuable input for policymakers.

Details

African Journal of Economic and Management Studies, vol. 11 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2040-0705

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 16 August 2019

Paul Adjei Kwakwa, Hamdiyah Alhassan and George Adu

Even though many studies have attempted to understand the drivers of carbon dioxide emission and energy consumption to help tackle environmental issues, not much has been done to…

Abstract

Purpose

Even though many studies have attempted to understand the drivers of carbon dioxide emission and energy consumption to help tackle environmental issues, not much has been done to estimate the effect of natural resources extraction on these two variables. This paper aims to analyze the long-run and short-run carbon dioxide emission and energy consumption effect of natural resources extraction in Ghana.

Design/methodology/approach

The theoretical foundation for this study is the Stochastic Impacts Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology (STIRPAT) model. Secondary Data sourced from World Development Indicators (2018) for the period of 1971-2013 were used. Estimation was done by using the autoregressive distributed lag.

Findings

It was found among other things that urbanization, and extraction of natural resources contribute to Ghana’s carbon dioxide emission, while official development assistance helps in reducing carbon dioxide emission in the long run. Again, while income and extraction of natural resources increase energy consumption, urbanization and official development assistance reduce environmental degradation in the long run. Regarding the short run, income and urbanization both increase energy consumption and carbon dioxide emission; trade openness and official development assistance decrease both carbon dioxide emission and energy consumption.

Research limitations/implications

The implications from the results include the need to strictly enforce laws regulating extractive activities in the country to ensure a safe environment; and also to raise tariff and non-tariff barriers on products that do not promote a friendly environment and vice versa.

Originality/value

The effect of natural resources extraction on carbon emission and energy consumption is examined.

Details

International Journal of Energy Sector Management, vol. 14 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1750-6220

Keywords

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