To diversify or not to diversify, that is the question. Pursuing agricultural development for smallholder farmers in marginal areas of Ghana.

Many smallholder farmers in developing countries grow multiple crop species on their farms, maintaining de facto crop diversity. Rarely do agricultural development strategies consider this crop diversity as an entry point for fostering agricultural innovation. This paper presents a case study, from an agricultural research-for-development project in northern Ghana, which examines the relationship between crop diversity and self-consumption of food crops, and cash income from crops sold by smallholder farmers in the target areas. By testing the presence and direction of these relationships, it is possible to assess whether smallholder farmers may benefit more from a diversification or a specialization agricultural development strategy for improving their livelihoods. Based on a household survey of 637 randomly selected households, we calculated crop diversity as well as its contribution to self-consumption (measured as imputed monetary value) and to cash income for each household. With these data we estimated a system of three simultaneous equations. Results show that households maintained high levels of crop diversity: up to eight crops grown, with an-average of 3.2 per household, and with less than 5% having a null or very low level of crop diversity. The value of crop species used for self-consumption was on average 55% higher than that of crop sales. Regression results show that crop diversity is positively associated with self-consumption of food crops, and cash income from crops sold. This finding suggests that increasing crop diversity opens market opportunities for households, while still contributing to self-consumption. Given these findings, crop diversification seems to be more beneficial to these farmers than specialization. For these diversified farmers, or others in similar contexts, interventions that assess and build on their de facto crop diversity are probably more likely to be successful.

Economic analysis of youth participation in agripreneurship in Benin.

The study assessed the factors affecting youth participation in rural entrepreneurship in Benin using data from the School-to-Work Transition Survey (SWTS) and applying the binary logit and the multinomial logit models. The results showed youth who have a larger number of children are more likely to choose agricultural businesses (agripreneurship) while those who have formal education, who have received training on entrepreneurship, who have registered business, and those who have located in urban areas are more likely to engage in non-agricultural businesses. Within agripreneurship, youth who belong to a larger household are more likely to engage in farming while those who are educated, who have access to credit, and who are located in urban areas are more likely to be engaged in non-farming agri-businesses. The study also revealed that cash crop production among Beninese youth was positively influenced by access to credit. The findings suggest that it would be necessary to promote development programmes that are geared towards enhancing the capacities of the youth with regards to concepts and skills of entrepreneurship in agriculture and measures to overcome challenges associated with different agribusiness activities.

Potential impact of groundnut production technology on welfare of smallholder farmers in Ghana.

This study was conducted to assess the potential impact of applying a new groundnut planting density on welfare of smallholder farmers in northern Ghana. We used data from on-farm experiments, focus group discussions, and a household survey. We followed three steps in our analysis. First, we conducted cost-benefit analysis in which we showed the economic advantage of the new technology over the farmers' practice. Second, we predicted adoption rates along timeline using the Adoption and Diffusion Outcome Prediction Tool (ADOPT). Third, using the results of the first and the second steps, we estimated the potential impact of the technology on poverty at household level using a combination of methods such as economic surplus model and econometric model. The cost-benefit analysis shows that increasing plant density increases farmers' financial returns i.e., the benefit-cost-ratio increases from 1.05 under farmers' practice to 1.87 under the best plant density option, which is 22 plants/sqm. The adoption prediction analysis shows that the maximum adoption rate for the best practice will be 62% which will take about nine years to reach. At the maximum adoption rate the incidence of extreme poverty will be reduced by about 3.6% if farmers have access to the international groundnut market and by about 2% if they do not have. The intervention will also reduce poverty gap and poverty severity. The results suggest that policy actions which can improve farmers' access to the international market will enhance farmers' welfare more than the situation in which farmers have access to domestic markets only. Furthermore, promoting a more integrated groundnut value-chain can broaden the demand base of the produce resulting in higher and sustainable impact of the technology on the welfare of groundnut producers and beyond.