Technical Efficiency Of Dry Season Vegetable Farmers And Its Implications On Households’ Food Security In The Upper East Region Of Ghana
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University Of Ghana
Abstract
Food and nutrition insecurity increasingly threaten the livelihoods of poor people in Northern
Ghana. Most farmers turn to commercial production of vegetables during the dry season in the
Upper East Region of Ghana to overcome food and nutrition insecurity challenges. However,
crop yields are sub-optimal, affecting households’ income relied upon for food security.
Employing survey data from dry season vegetable farmers in the Upper East Region, this study
hypothesised that improving the technical efficiency of dry season vegetable farmers will
increase the productivity of the farms, enhance their income and lead to the achievement of
their households’ food security. This study analyzes the technical efficiency of dry season
vegetable farmers and its implications on households’ food security in the region. The study
adopts the Stochastic Frontier Approach (SFA), incorporating flexible risk properties to
account for production risk to estimate the technical efficiency level of the vegetable farmers.
Also, the study identifies production risk and technical inefficiency factors affecting the output
value of vegetables; determines the gross profits of farmers producing vegetables such as
pepper, onions, tomatoes and garden eggs using gross margin analysis; and examines the extent
of food insecurity among vegetable farm households with the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT)
and Food Security Index (FSI) frameworks. Further, it adopts the probit and ordered probit
models to identify the effect of the determinants of dry season vegetable income on the
households’ calorie availability and dietary diversity, respectively. A multistage sampling
procedure was applied to select three hundred and twenty-two (322) dry season farmers from
seven (7) irrigation districts in the region. The findings show that production risk and technical
inefficiency exist in dry season vegetable production. The vegetable farms in the dry season
exhibit increasing returns to scale. The results demonstrate that labour, seed and agrochemical
costs decrease the output variability while fertilizer and irrigation costs increase the output
variability of vegetables. The overall predicted mean technical efficiency score for dry season
vegetable farms is 73%, which means 27% of the output value of the farms is lost due to
production risk and technical inefficiency. The key factors that enhance the technical efficiency
of dry season vegetable production are extension visits, usage of motorized pumps, gravity-fed
irrigation technology and experience of the farmers. Pepper production gives the highest gross
profit, followed by onions, tomatoes and garden eggs in that order. The headcount ratio of the
FGT model shows that 45.7% of sampled households are food insecure. The depth and severity
of food insecurity are 32.20% and 12.97%, respectively. The average per capita daily calorie
availability for food secure households is 2,958kcal while that of the food insecure households
is 1,670kcal, far below the mean per capita daily requirement of 2,421kcal. Higher technically
efficient dry season vegetable farmers who adopt gravity-fed and motorised water pump
irrigation technologies are food secure households whereas technically inefficient farmers who
adopt a manual system of irrigation are food insecure. Factors such as dry season vegetable
income, vegetable land size, technical efficiency positively improve the probability of
achieving high households’ calorie consumption. To improve the poor dietary diversity food
consumption level of farm households in the region, dry season vegetable farmers should utilise
water pumps and rehabilitate existing gravity-fed irrigation infrastructure to enhance the
technical efficiency and productivity of the farmers. Also, the existing fertilizer and seeds
subsidies should extend to include agrochemicals to enhance the technical efficiency of farmers
to increase vegetables’ output and (profit) income.
Description
PhD. Agribusiness