Barriers to Entry and Farmers Participation in Dry Season Irrigation Farming in the Upper East Region of Ghana

Abstract

The main objective of the study was to determine if there were differential barriers to entry into dry season farming in the Kassena Nankana East and Bongo Districts of the Upper East Region of Ghana and if so, how this affects participation and to what outcome. The types of barriers identified as important from the literature were categorized into economic, institutional, technical and socio- cultural barriers. The research design was a case study and used both quantitative and qualitative methods. Data collection involved focus group discussions (FDGs) with different categories of farmers, key informant interviews with selected management of Irrigation Company of Upper Region (ICOUR) as well as interviewer administered survey of 300 farmers randomly selected from three (3) communities each in the Kassena Nankana East and Bongo districts. The communities were randomly selected from ones around the Vea and Tono Irrigation Schemes. Analysis of quantitative survey data was carried out using SPSS, and involved frequencies, percentages and ranking, with statistical tests using chi square (χ 2 test) for categorical data and Spearman‘s Rank Order Correlation (r s ) for ranked data to test the association between different farmer attributes and levels of barriers. Thematic content analysis was used for the qualitative data. The main attributes use for categorizing the farmers are gender, educational levels and wealth status. There was statistically no significant correlation in the ranking of economic barriers based on educational status (r cal =0.68 <rt ab = 0.71) and wealth status (r cal = 0.32 < rt ab = 0.71). Also the institutional barriers were also not correlated and differed among men and women (r cal =0.4 < rt ab = 0.9), educated and non- educated (r cal = 0.3 < rt ab = 0.9) as well as the rich and poor (r cal =0.2 < rt ab = 0.9) farmers. The results also points to non – correlation and differences in ranking of socio – cultural barriers on gender (r cal =0.3< rt ab = 0.9), educational status (r cal =0.6 < rt ab = 0.9) and wealth status (r cal =0.7 < rt ab = 0.9). Thus the finding is that women, non –educated and poor farmers were confronted with higher institutional barriers than their male, educated and rich counterparts. Whereas unfair land allocation was found to be the most important institutional barrier facing them it was found to be the least among the men, educated and rich farmers. Ranking of economic barriers were not correlated and differed on educational and wealth status. Difficulty to assess credit and high cost of inputs were found to be the most important critical economic barrier confronting the non –educated and poor farmers as against low prices of outputs for the educated and rich farmers.The results also points to non – correlation and differences in ranking of socio – cultural barriers on gender, educational and wealth status with the system of land inheritance been the most important barrier confronting the poor, non –educated and women farmers as against family responsibility and workload for the rich, educated and male farmers. Further, the analysis revealed that there were significant relationships between gender (χ 2 =6.85, df =1, p = 0.01) and wealth status (χ 2 = 20.9, df =3 p = 0.00) of farmers and participation in dry season farming. Significantly more men (92.2%) participated in dry season farming than women (82.2%), while less poor farmers (65.2%) compared to rich farmers (93.5%) participated in dry season farming. Educational status of farmers however had no significant effect on participation in dry season irrigated farming (χ 2 = 0.12, df = 1, P=0.73). In addition, farmers‘ participation was found to be significantly and inversely correlated to economic (r = -0.06), institutional (r=-0.04) and technical barriers (r =-0.02) whereas socio– cultural barriers had a significant positive correlation (r =0.013), especially with increasing family responsibilities. Therefore in general, the higher the barrier confronting a category of farmer the less the participation in dry season irrigated farming. Further, dry season farming results in additional average income of (GHc1, 436.33) compared with rain- fed farming (GHc 764.81). Social groups who cannot scale these barriers to participate in dry season farming exclusively or in addition to rain-fed farming are disadvantaged with regards to their livelihoods. A higher proportion of dry season farmers were able to acquire assets of high value (20.5%) compared to (16.7%) for rain-fed farmers; improved on their food security situation (65.4%) compared to (41.7%) of rain- fed farmers; and improved on the quality of dwelling (76.9%) as compared with (41.7%) of rain-fed farmers. Therefore participation in dry season farming contributed to enhancing the livelihoods of the farmers in the study area. It is concluded that socio-economic characteristics such as gender, educational and wealth status influence participation in dry season farming and through that on livelihood outcomes to the disadvantage of the women, less educated and the poor. It is recommended that affirmative action in favor of these vulnerable social groups is undertaken as a means of social protection around public irrigation schemes.