Food-cash crop diversification and farm household welfare in the Forest-Savannah Transition Zone of Ghana

IF 5.6 1区农林科学 Q1 FOOD SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY

Food Security Pub Date : 2024-03-08 DOI:10.1007/s12571-024-01434-3

Ishmael Hashmiu, Faizal Adams, Seth Etuah, Jonathan Quaye

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Despite the importance of crop diversification in enhancing household income and food security, significant knowledge gaps remain in terms of the precursors and actual impacts of diversified food-cash crop systems. Thus, we assessed the determinants of food-cash crop diversification, and its impacts on the income and food security of farmers using survey data from 408 randomly-selected households in the Forest-Savannah Transition Zone of Ghana. The study employs the multinomial logistic model (MNL) to examine farm households’ decision to practice food-cash crop diversification, while the inverse probability weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) was performed to determine the impact of the diversification on food security and household income. Diversification of cash and food crops impacted positively on household annual crop income and on food security, and these positive impacts further increased as the diversity of tree cash cropping increased, with the addition of cocoa and/or cashew. Our findings emphasise the importance of income from tree cash crops, and complementarities between cash crops and food crop production in explaining the food security merits of diversified food-cash crop systems. Overall, a food-crop-farmers’ decision to diversify into cocoa and cashew in Ghana was significantly predicted by farming experience of the household head, and farm characteristics of the household (fallow land availability, land ownership and livestock ownership), as well as economic (annual crop income and access to off-farm income) and institutional (access to extension) factors. These results imply that enhancing farmers’ access to financial and technical support services and promoting livestock farming could encourage the adoption of diversified cropping systems. However, since land ownership rights in sub-Saharan Africa are oftentimes unclear, contested or poorly enforced, pro-poor and equitable land tenure reforms would be indispensable in promoting diversification into tree cash crops by subsistence farm households.

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加纳森林-草原过渡区的粮食-现金作物多样化与农户福利

尽管作物多样化对提高家庭收入和粮食安全非常重要，但在粮食-现金作物多样化系统的前兆和实际影响方面仍存在巨大的知识差距。因此，我们利用在加纳森林-草原过渡区随机抽取的 408 个家庭的调查数据，评估了粮食-现金作物多样化的决定因素及其对农民收入和粮食安全的影响。研究采用多项式逻辑模型（MNL）来检验农户实行粮食-经济作物多样化的决定，同时进行反概率加权回归调整（IPWRA）来确定多样化对粮食安全和家庭收入的影响。经济作物和粮食作物的多样化对家庭每年的作物收入和粮食安全产生了积极影响，而且随着可可和/或腰果等经济作物种类的增加，这些积极影响也进一步加大。我们的研究结果强调了林木经济作物收入的重要性，以及经济作物和粮食作物生产之间的互补性，从而解释了多样化粮食-经济作物系统在粮食安全方面的优势。总体而言，户主的耕作经验、家庭的农场特征（可利用的休耕地、土地所有权和牲畜所有权）、经济因素（每年的作物收入和获得非农收入的机会）和制度因素（获得推广的机会）对加纳粮食作物农民决定多样化种植可可和腰果有显著的预测作用。这些结果表明，增加农民获得金融和技术支持服务的机会并促进畜牧业发展，可以鼓励采用多样化耕作制度。然而，由于撒哈拉以南非洲地区的土地所有权往往不明确、有争议或执行不力，因此，要促进自给农户多样化种植树木经济作物，就必须进行有利于穷人的公平土地保有权改革。

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来源期刊

Food Security FOOD SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY-

CiteScore

14.00

自引率

6.00%

发文量

审稿时长

>12 weeks

期刊介绍： Food Security is a wide audience, interdisciplinary, international journal dedicated to the procurement, access (economic and physical), and quality of food, in all its dimensions. Scales range from the individual to communities, and to the world food system. We strive to publish high-quality scientific articles, where quality includes, but is not limited to, the quality and clarity of text, and the validity of methods and approaches. Food Security is the initiative of a distinguished international group of scientists from different disciplines who hold a deep concern for the challenge of global food security, together with a vision of the power of shared knowledge as a means of meeting that challenge. To address the challenge of global food security, the journal seeks to address the constraints - physical, biological and socio-economic - which not only limit food production but also the ability of people to access a healthy diet. From this perspective, the journal covers the following areas: Global food needs: the mismatch between population and the ability to provide adequate nutrition Global food potential and global food production Natural constraints to satisfying global food needs: § Climate, climate variability, and climate change § Desertification and flooding § Natural disasters § Soils, soil quality and threats to soils, edaphic and other abiotic constraints to production § Biotic constraints to production, pathogens, pests, and weeds in their effects on sustainable production The sociological contexts of food production, access, quality, and consumption. Nutrition, food quality and food safety. Socio-political factors that impinge on the ability to satisfy global food needs: § Land, agricultural and food policy § International relations and trade § Access to food § Financial policy § Wars and ethnic unrest Research policies and priorities to ensure food security in its various dimensions.