Technical Efficiency Of Dry Season Vegetable Farmers And Its Implications On Households’ Food Security In The Upper East Region 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.