Traditional and Western knowledge systems used by smallholders: Harnessing synergies for improved household food security in rural Ghana

ABSTRACT

The discourse on knowledge integration persists in research and development practice. The need for traditional and Western knowledge systems to work together to achieve sustainable agricultural development in Ghana’s rural areas has become evermore relevant to achieve household food security in the context of changing climate, declining soil fertility, and labour challenges. The authors examined the role of knowledge integration in shaping the food security outcomes of socially differentiated smallholders’ households in Kassena-Nankana Municipal District and the Kassena-Nankana West District in the Upper East Region of Ghana, where food insecurity prevalence is very high. Using mixed methods approach, they found that most low resource endowed households that were unable to combine traditional and Western farming methods were more likely to experience food insecurity than were other households. Farmers with higher resource endowments integrated knowledges from both traditional and Western systems leading to better yield outcomes. However, combining both knowledge systems did not guarantee automatic success due to intervening factors. The authors conclude that different categories of smallholders’ resource endowment significantly impacts the smallholders’ food security status, and recommend that policy and development programming should promote integration of traditional and Western farming knowledge systems to achieve sustainable food crop production.

KEYWORDS:

• household food security
• knowledge integration
• rural Ghana
• smallholder
• traditional knowledge

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In Ghana, the term ‘smallholder’ refers to a category of farmers with limited access to land, capital, agricultural inputs, technology, labour, mechanization, and markets, who are more vulnerable to risk than others, and who have landholdings less than 2 ha in size.

2 In Nankam-speaking communities

3 In the studied districts, mixed farming was done on land close to homesteads and involved the cultivation of food crops for household subsistence.