Input Supply Structure for Yam Production in Ghana

Yam is an extremely important crop for at least 60 million rural poor producers, processors and consumers in West Africa providing multiple opportunities for poverty reduction and nourishment of poor people in the sub-region. Despite the importance of this crop, its production is stagnating, thus threatening rural livelihoods and urban food security. Input supply dealers to the yam sub-sector are quite scanty and rather focused on general agro inputs. Literature on the structure of yam input supply systems is  scanty and non-existing. This creates inefficiencies in supplying the necessary inputs for production affecting productivity of the production process. The objective of this paper is therefore to provide a structural analysis of the input supply system and the role input dealers play in providing products and services to the  production process. Through the use of stakeholder analysis and structured interviews, results revealed that 50% of agro input dealers interviewed provided herbicides to farmers. Information on input on high demand was through extension (43%) indicating the relevance of the extension services in information delivery. The most common form of assistance was training (42.86%) followed by advisory services (28.57%) with limited access to credit (4.29 %). Gross margins were quite faviourable such that seed yam had gross margin of GHC 30 per 100 tubers, agro chemicals was GHC 5/litre and fertilizer GHC 2.67/Bag. Strengthening the capital base of input dealers will make them more efficient to serve the production system effectively and productively. Keywords: Input dealer,  yam production, labour , seed yam, agro input

Does Awareness influence Adoption of agricultural technologies? The case of Improved Sweet potato varieties in Ghana

The Government of Ghana together with donor agencies has in many years paid attention to the agricultural sector with special emphasis on staple crops especially root and tuber crops. Sweetpotato has particularly received a lot of research funding over many years to develop many varieties which have been disseminated. However, many farmers still depend on traditional varieties. The aim of the study was to determine the role of awareness in adoption of improved sweetpotato varieties. By using a cross- sectional data collected from 526 farmers and employing binary logit model, an analysis of factors influencing adoption of improved sweetpotato varieties adoption was evaluated. The results revealed that sixty five percent of farmers had adopted improved sweetpotato varieties. Eighty five percent of farmers were aware of the improved sweetpotato varieties. Empirical results revealed that apart from the standard farm and farmer characteristics and institutional factors that influenced adoption, awareness positively and significantly influenced adoption of improved sweetpotato varieties. Awareness creation and education of the improved varieties will encourage adoption. Government and donor agencies should support the extension services in terms of resources to conduct more demonstrations to create awareness. Furthermore media could be engaged to support dissemination of improved varieties