Motivations, enablers and barriers to the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices by smallholder farmers: Evidence from the transitional and savannah agroecological zones of Ghana

Abstract

This paper examined the prioritized climate-smart agricultural practices by smallholder farmers, the motivations of adopting climate-smart agricultural practices, the enablers to the successful adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices, and the barriers to the successful adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices in the transitional and savannah agroecological zones of Ghana. Specifically, we employed ethnographic research using participatory approaches, including two stakeholder workshops and household surveys with 1061 households in the transitional and savannah agroecological zones of Ghana. The weighted average index (WAI) and problem confrontation index (PCI) were used to rank smallholder farmers’ perceived enablers to the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices and the barriers affecting climate-smart agricultural practices, respectively. Results suggest that the majority of the respondents used a suite of climate-smart agricultural practices, including the timely harvesting of produce and storage, emergency seed banking, appropriate and timely weed and pest control, and early planting as practices to build climate resilience. The majority of smallholder farmers primarily employed climate-smart agricultural practices to improve household food security (96.2%), reduce pests and diseases (95.6%), and obtain higher yields and greater farm income (93.2%). Findings also show that secured land tenure system arrangement, understanding the effects of climate change, and access to sustainable agricultural technologies were ranked the first, second, and third most important enablers to the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices with the WAI values of 2.86, 2.75, and 2.70, respectively. Key barriers to the successful adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices included incidences of pests and diseases (PCI = 2530), inadequate access to agricultural credit (PCI = 2502), high cost of improved crop varieties (PCI = 2334), and limited government support with farm inputs (PCI = 2296). Smallholder farmers need to be better supported through the provision of appropriate institutional and policy arrangements together with improved land management extension advice to overcome these barriers and facilitate the more effective implementation of climate-smart agricultural practices in Ghana.