AGRICULTURAL TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION AND CONTRACT PARTICIPATION AS A MECHANISM FOR ENHANCING SCHOOL LUNCH PROGRAMS: THE CASE OF WOMEN FARMERS IN GHANA

The dissertation consists of three studies that seek to identify school caterer and women farmer constraints that have hindered the buy-local policy mandate of the Ghana School Lunch program, and to explore gendered agricultural technology adoption and contract participation strategies that could facilitate the policy mandate. The first study documents the constraints that have minimized caterer purchases of school food items from local farmers. The study presents an overview of the Ghana School Lunch Program and the buy-local policy mandate issued to school caterers. Survey data and descriptive analysis are employed to document and discuss the constraints that prevent school caters from purchasing from local farmers as well as the constraints faced by smallholder women farmers in supplying to school caters. The study subsequently discusses school caterers’ compensating variation of a hypothetical policy that requires them to firstly provide recommended portions of vegetables and protein, and secondly include fruits in the lunch of the schoolchildren. The second study analyses the factors underlying the probability that women smallholder farmers - compared to male farmers - adopt less a) improved seeds, b) fertilizer, c) herbicides and d) pesticides. The study further examines the sensitivity of gender differences in technology adoption to crop choice, particularly maize and legume, as well as the possible heterogeneity of technology adoption differences within rural and peri-urban communities. The adoption of these improved technologies is modeled using multivariate probit regressions. A gender gap is observed among legume farmers for improved seed and pesticide adoption. Moreover, the findings indicate that female maize farmers who have input into all cash crop production decisions are more likely to adopt improved seeds and pesticides. Among legume farmers, the results indicate that female farmers who are educated and have access to credit are more likely to adopt fertilizer, while female legume farmers who have a say in what the use of income generated from cash crop farming are more likely to adopt pesticides. These results imply that policy-makers and development practitioners in sub-Saharan Africa should consider strategies to target and increase educational, financial and productive assets of female farmers in order to close the gender technology gap and increase multiple technology adoption. The third study examines the use of farm-to-school contracts as a means to provide access to credit for women farmers in rural and peri-urban areas and facilitate the buy-local policy mandate. In particular, the study examines the factors influencing male and female smallholder farmers’ minimum willingness to accept (WTA) farm-to-school-lunch contracts for maize and cowpea beans. The minimum WTA simultaneously measures the decision to participate as well as the minimum price at which the smallholder farmer accepts the contract. Using sex-disaggregated data from a field experiment, a Tobit model is applied to explain the underlying factors influencing male and female smallholder farmer’s minimum WTA for a set of hypothetical maize and cowpea beans contracts. The results for the pooled sample indicate that the delivery at harvest option increases farmers’ minimum willingness to accept both the maize and beans contracts. The study further examines heterogeneity in the minimum WTA among smallholder farmers. The results in the female specification indicate that, the advance pay option lowers the minimum WTA for maize contracts. Additionally, women farmers who own non-farm business, compared to a male with a non-farm business, have a lower minimum WTA for the maize and beans contracts. The results suggest that if the government considers contractual arrangements between school caterers and local farmers to facilitate the buy-local policy mandate, an advance pay option to women farmers may yield lower premiums for contracted food items

The Effects of Household Socio-demographics on Restaurant Threshold Prices

This study examines the determinants of a household’s threshold price for a restaurant meal cost increase; the level of cost increase that would cause households to either eat in restaurants less frequently or change what they would typically purchase. The design of the study is formulated using a Tobit model to examine the threshold price by differing social, economic and demographic characteristics of households in Kentucky as well as their preferences for restaurant-specific characteristics. The empirical estimates suggest that households that frequently have dinner at restaurants, households with higher incomes and households that strongly prefer full-service restaurants have a positive threshold price-range; which suggests that such households are more willing to pay an additional cost increase in restaurant meals. Conversely, households that always notice taxes before paying their checks, households close to retirement-age, and households that do not strongly prefer local-food restaurants have negative threshold price-range and are consequently less willing to pay an additional cost increase in restaurant meals

Willingness of Rural and Peri-urban Women Smallholder Farmers to Participate in Home-grown School Feeding Farming Contracts

Conventional school feeding programs in developing economies have often been operated using international food aid to improve nutritional and educational outcomes of the most vulnerable school-age children. Home-Grown School Feeding (HGSF) programs on the other hand, refer to a framework in which the school feeding is administered using food that is locally grown by smallholder farmers; this mechanism is designed to link school feeding with local agricultural production, with a two-fold objective of increasing children’s well-being as well as promoting local agricultural production and development by generating demand for small-holder farmers’ output. Using survey data from 150 households in rural and peri-urban communities in Ghana, this study examines the binding constraints facing smallholder farmer when deciding to participate in a school feeding farming contract. The study elicits responses from both the male household head and a secondary respondent, typically a woman farmer to examine whether cash flow or market risk constraints are binding. The research uses preliminary descriptive results to assess whether farmers who receive an initial payment are more willing to participate in the school feeding program contract, than farmers who receive no initial payments and how these differ by gender

Willingness of Rural and Peri-Urban Women Smallholder Farmers to Participate in Home-Grown School Feeding Farming Contracts in Ghana

The Ghanaian government has implemented a Home-Grown School Feeding Program, which mandates that school caterers source food from local producers. The volume of local purchases, however, remains low. This study explores constraints faced by local producers—particularly women—in selling their production to local schools. We present results of an agricultural household survey, which includes questions pertaining to a series of hypothetical school-grower contracts. We find that women state slightly lower willingness to participate in contracts compared to men, something that is partially explained by their differential ability to dictate the management of land and use of household income

Factors associated with the use of liquefied petroleum gas in Ghana vary at different stages of transition

LPG Use analysis based on CWP Household Survey: The input raw files are in LPGUse_input_files/ The interim output files with respondent data are in LPGUse_miscoutput/ The outputs (plots/ tables) used in main and supplementary info document are generated in folder: LPGUse_paperoutput/ Once the Zip file 'Once the folder 'Codes and Plots Kar et al 2024' is unzipped, reader may directly run the file "Final09Jan2024paperCodesKaretal2024.Rmd". The pdf/ png files auto-generated in "LPGUse_paperoutput" have been used for the plots and figures in the main text and supplementary info. The details of software and package versions used for coding are provided in the .html file. The .Rmd code will use the source files in the folder 'LPGUse_input_files' and re-populate the files in the folders "LPGUse_miscoutput" and "LPGUse_paperoutput"