Gender-based participation in income generating activities in cocoa growing communities. The role of youth training programs.

Despite an impressive growth of Ghana's economy over the decades, it has been branded as 'jobless growth' manifested in growing unemployment among the youth. This growing unemployment rate is gender biased against women, with the United Nations expecting this to worsen globally over time. This study examines the determinants of gender-based participation of the youth in income generating enterprises in cocoa growing areas in Ghana, using a sample of 4,702 participants of the Next Generation Cocoa Youth Program (MASO) initiative. This data were obtained by Solidaridad West Africa. The sample was obtained through the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) technique to compare the characteristics of the male and female groups and remove missing observations. The multinomial regression model supported with descriptive analysis were employed for the estimation. It was found that most of those who participated (63%) in the training program were engaged in an income generating activity. Youth engagement in cocoa (9%) as compared with non-cocoa (28%) and joint enterprise (26%) is very low. Given the same level of exposure (MASO), women are more likely to be unemployed, less likely to engage in cocoa production and more likely to be engaged in non-cocoa enterprises. All non-cocoa business enterprises are dominated by men except petty trading and agro processing. Age, marital status, education, savings, additional training, migrant status and gender, influenced engagements in the various categories of enterprises. The study recommends rolling out other policies that can address challenges of women engagement in cocoa farming in addition to the training program. Policies towards encouraging savings among the youth is recommended to aid in startup businesses, which may be supported by low interest loans. Attention should be given to the non-cocoa sector in terms of employment as people are either losing interest in cocoa farming or diversifying their incomes to non-cocoa businesses.

Modelling adoption intensity of improved soybean production technologies in Ghana - a Generalized Poisson approach.

Soybean is an important cash crop especially for farmers in the north of Ghana. However, cultivation of the commodity is dominated by smallholders equipped with traditional tools, coupled with low or no adoption of improved soybean production technologies. Using primary data collected from 300 soybean farmers across northern Ghana, the study employed count data modelling to estimate the determinants of adoption intensity of sustainable soybean production technologies. The study accounted for potential estimation errors due to under-dispersion and over-dispersion, by using a model based on the generalized Poisson distribution. On the average, a farmer adopted 50% of the identified sustainable soybean production technologies. Age, education, extension visits, mass media through radio, and the perception of adoption of soybean production technologies being risky are significant with positive influence on the adoption intensity of sustainable soybean production technologies. The study therefore recommends among others, that various extension programmes should intensify education on the benefits of adopting sustainable soybean production practices. There is the need to set up many technology demonstration farms to give farmers hands-on training during field days.

Gender perspectives of climate change adaptation in two selected districts of Ghana.

This study analyzed gender differences in climate adaptation by farming households in Ghana. This involved 300 farmers from two districts of Ghana and the data analyzed using descriptive statistics. The results showed severer climate impacts on the livelihoods of females than males in Ghana. On the contrary, the adaptive capacity of males was found to be higher than that of females. This was supported by the observed differences in gender climate adaptation where both male heads and male household members had higher mean climate adaptations than both female heads and female household members. Overall, the climate adaptation strategies mostly adopted by both males and females include changing planting dates, row planting, planting early maturing and drought tolerant seed varieties, mixed farming, intercropping and refiling of farm plots. Except for zero tillage and intercropping, male farmers had high adoption levels than female farmers. It is concluded that the observed gender adaptation differences were due to the levels and intensity of adoption other than differences in the type of strategies adopted by the different gender groups. The Ministry of Food and Agriculture should consider integrating climate adaptation policies into current agricultural policies such as "planting for food and jobs" policy.