LIVELIHOOD DIVERSIFICATION STRATEGIES OF SMALLHOLDER FARMERS IN THE AHANTA WEST AND MPOHOR WASSA DISTRICTS OF THE WESTERN REGION

BERNARD ARCHIBALD SENYO AGYEMAN MPHIL AGRICULTURAL ADMINISTRATION II (10358708)

Outline of presentation
Background of study Problem statement Research questions Objectives of the study Justification Methodology References
2

BACKGROUND OF STUDY

Total land area of Ghana is about 23,853,900ha, of which 57% is arable and currently, 53.6% is under cultivation (MOFA, 2009) Smallholder farmers dominate Ghanas food production, nevertheless they are faced with challenges in the pursuance of their livelihood which results in poverty Livelihood refers to the capabilities, assets(stores, resources, claims and access) and activities required for a means of living(chambers and Conway, 1992)
3

BACKGROUND CONTD

According to Ellis( 2000), Livelihood Diversification refers to the process by which rural households construct an increasingly diverse portfolio of activities and assets in order to survive and improve their standard of living.

Farmers in the pursuance of livelihood diversification do not totally neglect agriculture(Montpellier, 2007)

PROBLEM STATEMENT
Agriculture contributes to about 29.9% to the GDP (GSS, 2010) and importance (Todaro and Smith, 2009) With smallholder farmers quest to escape from poverty, they diversify Opportunities and challenges of oil exploration( Amoasah, 2010, World Bank, 2009) Linkage of diversification to food insecurity(type livelihood activity engaged in) (Hazell, 2009) Interest in the livelihood strategies
5

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

What are the constraints of smallholder farmers in the districts?

What is the extent of poverty among smallholder farmers in the districts? What is the degree of livelihood diversification of smallholder farmers in the districts? What are the determinants of livelihood diversification of farmers in the districts?
6

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

General objective To assess the livelihood diversification strategies by smallholder farmers in the Ahanta West and Mpohor Wassa Districts of the Western Region of Ghana

Specific objectives 1. To identify and rank the constraints of farmers in Ahanta West and Mpohor Wassa districts
7

SPECIFIC OBJECTIVES CONTD

2.

To estimate the poverty level of farmers in the selected districts

3. To determine the degree of livelihood diversification of smallholder farmers in the selected districts

4. To identify the determinants of livelihood diversification in the selected districts

8

Justification of the study The identified constraints of farmers will help government to put in place policies and programmes to address these constraints;

The estimated poverty level and livelihood diversification as well as the identified livelihood strategies will help policy makers know the necessary support to give farmers in order to ensure food security and poverty reduction;

JUSTIFICATION CONTD The identified determinants will also facilitate planning and support from NGOS and the government Add to knowledge

10

METHODOLOGY

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK FOR THE STUDY OF: Livelihood diversification strategies of smallholder farmers in the western region

11

Smallholder farmers Challenges Market ,Labour, Input constraints yPoor Road , Land insecurity, climatic risk

Rural (majority)

Poverty

Opportunities Market, urbanization, resource exploration

Livelihood diversification Off-farm strategies/assets (Business trade, artisanship, rent incomes, services etc)

On-farm strategies/assets (Crop/livestock, hired labour, cooking etc)

Successful livelihood Diversification strategy Rise in income levels Food security

Failed livelihood

Diversification strategy

Poverty
Sustainable livelihood

Food insecurity

12

Objective one
Identification and ranking of the constraints of smallholder farmers This will be analyse by the use of descriptive statistics The Kendall's coefficient of concordance will be used to test the agreement of the rankings between the rankers

12s W! 2 3 p n  n  pT
S=sum of squares statistics , P=number of variables N=number of respeondent, T=correction factor for tied ranks
13

S ! Ri  R
i !1

Ri= row sum of ranks R= mean of the Ri values

14

OBEJECTIVE TWO Estimation of the Poverty level of the smallholder farmers The Foster- Greer-Thorbecke (FGT)(1984) Weighted poverty index for quantitative poverty measure will be used for this study The formula is given as:
pa = 1 N Z i  Yi zi i !1
q a

Where Pa= the weighted poverty index for the ith sub-group a= FGT index and takes on values of 0,1 and 2 for incidence, depth and severity of poverty measures respectively
15

Poverty level estimation contd

Z=poverty line for ith sub-group q=the number of individuals below the poverty line N=the total number of individuals in the population Yij=the per capita expenditure of household j in the sub-group I Z-Y=poverty gap of the ith household Z-Y/Z=poverty gap ratio

q/n=he proportion of the population that falls below the poverty line

16

Objective Three Determination of the degree of livelihood diversification This will be achieved using the Simpsons Index of diversity (SID)

SID = 1- p

2 i

Where Pi is the proportion of income coming from source i The value of SID falls within 0 and 1, if there is only one source of income, Pi=1, so SID=0 As the number of sources increases, the shares of (Pi) decline, as the sum of the squared share, so that SID approaches 1
17

Objective three cont d

The categories and sources of diversified sources of income is borrowed from the work of Saha and Bahal (2010), Trade, Handicrafts, Service Provision and Rental income from both Non-farm and off-farm activities

A Success-Failure scale will be used to measure the success failure of the diversifiers in their diversified livelihood

18

Objective four Estimation of the determinants of livelihood diversification in the districts The Tobit Regression Model will used to achieve this objective The variables that will be used are adapted from the works of (Oluwatayo, 2009) The model is specified as: Y=BXi+ I j
I j =is normally distributed with zero mean

Y = livelihood diversification index obtained Xi= dependent variables

19

Objective four contd

Variable X1 X2 X3 X4 X5 X6 X7 X8 X9 X10 Age Gender Marital status Household size Formal education Poverty status Income Primary occupation Access to credit facility Access to Extension service
20

Measurement Years Female=0, male=1 Married=1, Single or widowed=0

Apriori -+ + + + -+

Poor=1, non-poor=1 Cedis

+ -+

No=1, Yes=0

Study Areas Ahanta West District: A population of 95,140, with 65% directly involved farming. The districts closeness to the Sekondi-Takoradi metropolis enhances trade and business. Apart from food crops grown, large tracts of land are also put under Oil palm and Rubber cultivation by Norpalm and GREL respectively. Its is also home to Oil and Gas exploration. Mpohor Wassa district: shares boundary with the Ahanta west district to the Subsistence and large scale agricultural production employs about 71.5% of the workforce in the district. The average farm size is one acre per farm and dominated by smallholder, apart from food crops grown, cash crops: cocoa, oil palm(BOPP) and to some coffee are also cultivated
21

SOURCES OF DATA

Both primary and secondary data will be collected. A structured questionnaire with both open and close ended questions will be used. The questionnaires will be piloted prior to data collection for data validation. A cross sectional data will be collected on, socio-economics, production, poverty and livelihood strategies

22

SAMPLE SIZE AND SAMPLING

A multi-stage sampling technique will be used; purposive sampling will be used to select the communities, and stratified sampling for the farmers (basis of gender)

A total of 200 farmers will be surveyed from farmers population

Statistical tools SPSS (data management) and the STATA (for the analysis)
23

References 1. Amoasah, george (2010).the potential impacts of oil and gas exploration production on the coastal zone of Ghana, an ecosystem approach 2. Chambers, Robert and Gordon, R. Conway (1992) Sustainable Rural Livelihoods: Practical concepts for the 21st Century. IDS Discussion paper, No.296. Brighton: Institute of Development studies 3. Ellis, F(2000). Rural livelihoods and diversity in developing countries, oxford: oxford University press 4. Foster, J.E, J Greer and E. Thorbecke (1984). A class of decomposal poverty measures, Econometrica, 52(3), pp.761776

24

1. Ghana statistical service (2011), revised Domestic product 2010 2. Hazell, P.2009. the Asian Green Revolution. IFPRI Discussion paper 00911, November 2009, washington D.C. IFPRI 3. Ministry of food and agriculture (2009), Agriculture in Ghana: facts and figures, Accra, Ghana 4. Montpellier, France(2007). Pro-poor development in low income countries food agriculture, trade and environment. 5. Oluwatayo, I,B(2009). Poverty and income diversification among households in rural Nigeria: A gender Analysis of livelihood patterns 6. Saha, Biswarup and Bahal, Ram(2010), livelihood diversification pursued by farmers in west Bengal 7. Todaro Michael P. and Smith Stephen C. Smith .(2009). Economic Development 10th Edition

25