Agroecological dimension of sustainable intensification technologies adoption in northern Ghana

Abstract

Adopting sustainable intensification technologies improves the productivity, incomes, and livelihoods of small farm households; however, their adoption remains disproportionately low. Although soil, climate and vegetative cover are important factors in determining the viability of sustainable intensification technologies in agronomic trials or field experiments, they are rarely considered in socio-economic analyses of smallholder adoption decisions. Using agroecological zones as proxies for similar soil, climate, and vegetation conditions in two agroecological zones in northern Ghana, we examined their effects on smallholder farmers’ decisions to adopt sustainable intensification technologies. We applied a multistage sampling technique to obtain data from 461 small farm households in the Sudan savannah and Guinea savannah agroecological zones. We observed a statistically significant difference in the covariates of adopters and non-adopters of sustainable intensification technologies in terms of age (6.389, p < 0.010), education (0.106, p < 0.010), group membership (0.648, p < 0.010), access to extension services (1.274, p < 0.010) and access to credit (GH¢52.436, p < 0.010). The odds of sustainable intensification technologies adoption depend on age, number of agricultural extension visits, group or farmer-based organisation membership, education and agroecological factors (2.140, p < 0.050). The study provides an opportunity for future research to consider the inclusion of farm-level measurement of agroecological variables in explaining the adoption behaviour of small farm households.

Keywords:

• Adoption
• agroecological zones
• northern Ghana
• smallholder farmers
• sustainable intensification technologies (SITs)

REVIEWing EDITOR:

• Manuel Tejada, Universidad de Sevilla, Spain

SUBJECTS:

• Agriculture & Environmental Sciences
• Botany
• Plant and Animal Ecology

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to two anonymous reviewers whose comments helped improve this paper. And to Africa RISING Ghana Project, funded by USAID under grant# AID-BFS-G-11-00002. Through the project data used for the analysis was collected.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data for the analysis are available from the corresponding author and may be provided on reasonable request.

Notes

1 The term agroecology has been broadened and defined in many ways (Altieri, 2018). But, in this study, it is used to mainly refer to conditions of soil, climate and vegetative cover as outlined in Section 2.2.

2 Adopters, as used in this study, refer to smallholder maize and cowpea farmers who chose to participate in the Africa RISING project and were implementing at least three of the proposed technologies at the time of the data collection.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emmanuel Tetteh Jumpah

Emmanuel Tetteh Jumpah is a doctoral student in the Department of Economics and Development, Faculty of Tropical AgriSciences, Czech University of Life Sciences, Prague (FTZ-CZU). He is also a researcher with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research-Science and Technology Policy Research Institute, Ghana. With over 10 years of experience in research and development. Abdulai Adams is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics at SD Dombo University of Business and Integrated Development University, Ghana. He possesses over 20 years of experience in research, lecturing, and international development programme management. He serves as a co-supervisor to Emmanuel Tetteh Jumpah. Tomas Ratinger is an Associate Professor in Econometrics in the Department of Economics and Development at FTZ-CZU and a Senior Researcher at the Technology Centre, Prague. With over 30 years of experience in lecturing, EU project management, and student supervision, he acts as the doctoral supervisor of Emmanuel Tetteh Jumpah. Bernard Kwamena Cobbina Essel is a doctoral student in the Department of Economics and Development at FTZ-CZU. Forzia Ibrahim is a doctoral student in the Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences at CZU. This research is the result of collaboration among the Department of Economics at FTZ-CZU, SD Dombo University of Business and Integrated Development Studies, and the Faculty of Forestry and Wood Sciences at CZU.