The effect of carbon farming training on food security and development resilience in Northern Ghana

Abstract

Carbon farming has recently been advocated for as a climate change and variability mitigation and/or adaptation strategy in global agriculture. In this study, we address an important research question of whether carbon farming training can improve household resilience capacity as well as food security by employing internationally standardized indicators. Household resilience capacity and its components are measured using the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)’s resilience capacity index while the food security measures used include household and child food insecurity experience scale (FIES and CFIES), food consumption score (FCS) and household dietary diversity score (HDDS). We relied on doubly robust treatment effect estimators to account for potential selection bias and heterogeneity. We find that carbon farming training has no statistically significant effect on overall household resilience capacity. However, we find a large and statistically significant effect on key components of resilience (specifically, access to basic services, assets and social safety nets) and a marginal improvement in adaptive capacity. We also find statistically significant effect on FCS and HDDS but not for the other food security indicators (FIES and CFIES). Overall, the results suggest that agricultural training programs, particularly climate change adaptation capacity building initiatives, could improve important welfare measures in developing countries.

Description

Research Article

Keywords

Carbon farming, biochar, compost, capacity building

Citation

Charles Yaw Okyere, Richmond Atta-Ankomah, Collins Asante Addo & Lukas Kornher (19 Apr 2024): The effect of carbon farming training on food security and development resilience in Northern Ghana, Climate and Development, DOI: 10.1080/17565529.2024.2342682Charles Yaw Okyere, Richmond Atta-Ankomah, Collins Asante Addo & Lukas Kornher (19 Apr 2024): The effect of carbon farming training on food security and development resilience in Northern Ghana, Climate and Development, DOI: 10.1080/17565529.2024.2342682