Socioeconomic Assessments of Organic Fertilizer Use Among Smallholder Farmers in Northern Ghana

Abstract Food insecurity and poverty continue to be major challenges for human development in Sub-Saharan Africa due to low agricultural productivity, linked to deteriorating soil conditions and inappropriate agrarian technologies. Green revolutionary measures, particularly increasing mineral fertilizer application, have always been proposed as natural remedies for resolving the yield crisis. However, Sub-Saharan African farmers face a myriad of challenges regarding mineral fertilizer use amid poorly developed input markets. Moreover, recent advances made towards fertilizer access in countries like Ghana have shown that merely increasing mineral fertilizer application is no panacea to African's farm productivity crisis, where arable lands have degraded. Meanwhile, organic fertilizers play a significant role in improving soil conditions for effective mineral fertilizer use. Thus, the focus on fertilizer use has shifted towards combining mineral with organic fertilizers for improved soil health and productivity. Towards this goal, agricultural development agencies in Northern Ghana, for the past decade, have been priming farmers to access and use more organic fertilizers, but the input's use remains low for many reasons, including a general lack of biomass in the area. This study explored rural farmers' motivations, decisions and behaviors regarding organic fertilizer use in the northeastern part of Ghana. It thus contributes insights from farmers' perspectives to the growing literature on organic-inorganic fertilizer use debate in Sub-Saharan Africa. Specifically, the study first examined observed farmer-decisions to identify decision trajectories (management approaches) that lead rural farm households to organic fertilizer use and related the decision classes to farmers' socioeconomic factors, including farm-resource base, using seemingly unrelated regressions to adjust for correlations between decisions. Second, it evaluated behavioral costs (difficulty) associated with prevailing organic practices and scaled farmers' attitudes towards organic fertilizer use, using the explanatory Rasch model to account for influences of farmer-characteristic difference on the scale. Third, following the potential outcome framework, an endogenous switching regression is employed to control for observed and unobserved organic fertilizer use selectivity as well as endogeneity biases while examining the input's effects on per capita food expenditure, food gap, and farm labor use. The final part of the study evaluated the possibility for municipal solid waste compost producers to market their products to rural farmers in Northern Ghana. Applying the generalized multinomial logit model on choice experimental data, the study account for preference and scale-heterogeneity and estimated farmers' willingness to pay for attributes of a hypothetical municipal waste compost. The typological analysis revealed four management approaches (decision trajectories) among the farmers. Three of these are borne by strategic motivations and actions, which, if supported, could lead to a significant increase in organic fertilizer use by the farmers. The seemingly unrelated regression analysis showed that uptake of each approach is affected by a subset of farmer characteristics. However, all include participation in training on organic fertilizer management. The empirical results also show that organic fertilizer practices in the area are generally moderate in behavioral difficulty. However, most of the farmers have weak attitudes; hence, they cannot effectively exploit over 80% of the practices. This attitude weakness is strongly related to farmers' socioeconomic factors, including low education and poor farm resource base. Despite the weak attitudes, the study further revealed that organic fertilizer significantly increases food consumption and reduces seasonal food-shortage in households who are able to use it. However, it requires more farm labor use, with nearly all the increased labor burden borne by female farmhands. Finally, the study has proven that, though with varied preferences, compost attributes, including its form, packaging (brand/label), and access, influence rural farmers' decision to buy it. The findings have significant policy implications. Particularly, they call for interventions that mitigate farmer-background factors hindering organic fertilizer adoption. Educating farmers through soil fertility management training, and helping them, especially females, acquire draught equipment are critical to increasing organic fertilizer use. Lastly, the government should subsidize organic fertilizers more than 50% to cover distribution costs, such that dealers can make it physically accessible to rural farmers

Organic Fertilizer Adoption, Household Food Access, and Gender-Based Farm Labor Use: Empirical Insights from Northern Ghana

This paper examined organic fertilizer adoption and its effects on two household food security indicators and gender-based farm labor use among smallholder farmers in Northern Ghana. An endogenous switching regression analysis shows that observed and unobserved farmer background factors determine farmers’ decision to adopt organic fertilizer as well as the outcomes from adoption. On average, adoption is associated with an 11% increase in per capita food consumption and a 55% reduction in household food gap duration. Adoption is also related to an increased labor use by 5.9 (90%) of female worker days and 1.3 (9%) of male worker days per acre, placing nearly all (82%) of the increased labor burden on female farmhands. We recommend mitigation of factors that hinder farmers from adopting the input and provision of female-user-friendly labor-saving devices for organic fertilizer use tasks

Assessing farmers' attitudes to, and the behavioural costs of, organic fertiliser practices in northern Ghana: An application of the behavioural cost approach

The use of organic fertiliser to improve soil health is crucial to halting the downward trend of crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa. If this goal is to be achieved, however, farmers require support to adopt organic fertiliser practices that match their attitudes and decision-making capacity. This study evaluated farmers' attitudes to a set of prevailing organic fertiliser practices and their associated behavioural costs (difficulty). The explanatory Rasch model was applied to a set of primary data from 250 farming households in north-east Ghana. The results showed that the average attitude of farmers was much less than the difficulty estimate of an average organic fertiliser practice, although the practices generally showed a moderate difficulty. On average, farmers' attitudes matched just three of sixteen practices on the scale, with most (70 %) of the farmers showing very weak attitudes towards the input. Latent regression results revealed that the weak attitude levels were strongly related to key factors in the farmers' background, including education, resource endowment and access to extension services. Participation in determining policies on organic fertiliser use enhances farmers' knowledge and skills concerning use of the input. Hence, access to such policies can replace education for the less-educated majority of farmers. Thus, training programmes are proposed that develop the average farmer's capacity to adopt these practices in this area, especially the less difficult ones. Supporting farmers with the acquisition of animal-drawn vehicles can also facilitate uptake of the more difficult organic fertiliser practices and increase use of the input

Price Transmission between Imported and Local Rice Markets in a Liberalised Economy: Are Ghana’s Rice Wars Just Much I Do about Nothing?

The effect of the reduction in import tariffs and liberalisation of marketing channels on price transmissionbetween agricultural commodity markets in developing countries, like Ghana has been a source of a notionaltrade conflict since the mid 1990s. The conflict is based on the view that import trade liberalisation destroyed thedomestic markets of import substitutes. One of Ghana’s import substitutes whose marketability, price andproduction are believed to be adversely affected by import liberalisation is rice. To understand what roleliberalisation plays in this regard, we examine the transmission of price signals between imported and localwholesale rice prices from 2006 to 2011 in Ghana. The results reveal the existence of long-run equilibriumrelationships and partial transmission of price shocks from local to imported rice prices, but the latter do notdominate prices of the local rice. Thus banning rice imports or slapping imports with high tariffs in line withpublic opinion in Ghana might not be an option to consider. Rather, encouraging quality improvement of localrice through modern processing techniques and enhancing competition between the two grades of rice at thedomestic scene has to be a key concern of government.Key Words: Markets, Rice, Price Transmission, Ghana, Liberalizatio

Evaluating Agricultural Policy Impacts in Ghana: The Case of Food Crop Development Project in Ejura-Sekyedumase

A Government of Ghana development project known as The Food Crop Development Project (FCDP) was introduced in Ghana with the aim of improving farm incomes, household food and nutrition security and reducing poverty among small-scale farmers. This study sought to find answers to the questions of whether participation in the FCDP improved maize output, household income and food security status. Applying endogenous switching regression (ESR), while accounting for self-selectivity bias, the findings indicate that access to extension and credit services significantly influenced households’ participation in FCDP and by extension adoption of improved practices. The results also reveal significant selectivity correction terms in the choices of both participation and non-participation, indicating that accounting for selection bias is a prerequisite for unbiased and consistent estimation. The findings also indicate participation and adoption of improved maize production technologies increase maize output and households’ incomes, while non-participation exerts the opposite effect. The policy implication of these findings is that subsidized agricultural input projects like the FCDP, have the potential to improve food security and farm incomes of peasant households. Keywords: Self-selectivity, endogenous switching regression (ESR), Ejura-Sekyedumase, food security

Co-transplantation of Human Embryonic Stem Cell-derived Neural Progenitors and Schwann Cells in a Rat Spinal Cord Contusion Injury Model Elicits a Distinct Neurogenesis and Functional Recovery

Co-transplantation of neural progenitors (NPs) with Schwann cells (SCs) might be a way to overcome low rate of neuronal differentiation of NPs following transplantation in spinal cord injury (SCI) and the improvement of locomotor recovery. In this study, we initially generated NPs from human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and investigated their potential for neuronal differentiation and functional recovery when co-cultured with SCs in vitro and co-transplanted in a rat acute model of contused SCI. Co-cultivation results revealed that the presence of SCs provided a consistent status for hESC-NPs and recharged their neural differentiation toward a predominantly neuronal fate. Following transplantation, a significant functional recovery was observed in all engrafted groups (NPs, SCs, NPs+SCs) relative to the vehicle and control groups. We also observed that animals receiving co-transplants established a better state as assessed with the BBB functional test. Immunohistofluorescence evaluation five weeks after transplantation showed invigorated neuronal differentiation and limited proliferation in the co-transplanted group when compared to the individual hESC-NPs grafted group. These findings have demonstrated that the co-transplantation of SCs with hESC-NPs could offer a synergistic effect, promoting neuronal differentiation and functional recovery

Functional Neuromuscular Junctions Formed by Embryonic Stem Cell-Derived Motor Neurons

A key objective of stem cell biology is to create physiologically relevant cells suitable for modeling disease pathologies in vitro. Much progress towards this goal has been made in the area of motor neuron (MN) disease through the development of methods to direct spinal MN formation from both embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells. Previous studies have characterized these neurons with respect to their molecular and intrinsic functional properties. However, the synaptic activity of stem cell-derived MNs remains less well defined. In this study, we report the development of low-density co-culture conditions that encourage the formation of active neuromuscular synapses between stem cell-derived MNs and muscle cells in vitro. Fluorescence microscopy reveals the expression of numerous synaptic proteins at these contacts, while dual patch clamp recording detects both spontaneous and multi-quantal evoked synaptic responses similar to those observed in vivo. Together, these findings demonstrate that stem cell-derived MNs innervate muscle cells in a functionally relevant manner. This dual recording approach further offers a sensitive and quantitative assay platform to probe disorders of synaptic dysfunction associated with MN disease

Oct4-Induced Reprogramming Is Required for Adult Brain Neural Stem Cell Differentiation into Midbrain Dopaminergic Neurons

Neural stem cells (NSCs) lose their competency to generate region-specific neuronal populations at an early stage during embryonic brain development. Here we investigated whether epigenetic modifications can reverse the regional restriction of mouse adult brain subventricular zone (SVZ) NSCs. Using a variety of chemicals that interfere with DNA methylation and histone acetylation, we showed that such epigenetic modifications increased neuronal differentiation but did not enable specific regional patterning, such as midbrain dopaminergic (DA) neuron generation. Only after Oct-4 overexpression did adult NSCs acquire a pluripotent state that allowed differentiation into midbrain DA neurons. DA neurons derived from Oct4-reprogrammed NSCs improved behavioural motor deficits in a rat model of Parkinson's disease (PD) upon intrastriatal transplantation. Here we report for the first time the successful differentiation of SVZ adult NSCs into functional region-specific midbrain DA neurons, by means of Oct-4 induced pluripotency