The Effect of Electricity Load Management on the Operations of Small and Medium Enterprises: A Case Study of La-Nkwantanang Madina Municipality

Ghana has been experiencing frequent power cuts over the last ten years.  The need to expand and diversify its generation capacity in order to improve supply security is key for development. This study explored the effects of electricity load management on the operation of small-scale enterprises, and examined the effectiveness of these enterprises’ coping mechanisms. A cross–sectional survey design was adopted as well as the mixed approach research design. A total of 152 small scale traders were sampled from Madina in La-Nkwantanang Municipality in the Greater Accra Region. The study depicted that the recent load management is having adverse effect on the profitability of many SMEs owing to the coping mechanism measures such as retrenchment of workers, working at night, reduction in workers’ salaries and use of generators they have adopted to lessen the impact of the frequent load management reported less effectiveness in resolving the challenges posed by load management. This paper advocate that, government should invest in solar energy to be a substitute power supply to the country during the dry season where there is constant sunlight which obviously will also reduce pressure on electricity plants. Broken and unbroken but old plants can be fixed or replaced by VRA and ECG to enable them work effectively as well as explore other energy technologies such as the thermal energy and the wind energy to restore constant power supply. Keywords: electricity load management, small and medium enterprises DOI: 10.7176/RJFA/10-2-0

The linkage between fertilizer consumption and rice production: Empirical evidence from Pakistan

Rice is one of the most important staple foods for 70 percent of the population of the world. It is among the main cereal crops grown in different regions of Pakistan as food crop. Pakistan has very much potentials for growing the crop and the potential rice production sown area is estimated to be about 2724 thousand hectares. The purpose of this study is to examine the linkage between fertilizer consumption and rice production in Pakistan from 1984 to 2014. For checking the stationarity of the data, this study incorporated Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) and Phillips Perron (PP) unit root tests. Furthermore, the Johenson Co-integration test is used to detect the long-term relationship among the series. Likewise, on the basis of annual time series data the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model is employed to evaluate the impact of fertilizer consumption on the production of rice in Pakistan up to now. The results of ADF and PP unit root tests reveal that fertilizer consumption and water availability are integrated at I(0) whereas area and rice production are integrated at I(1). The empirical findings of Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model indicate that area and fertilizer consumption for rice has a significant effect on the rice production in both short-run and long-run. In contrast, water availability has a significant effect on the rice production in the long-run but it was statistically insignificant in the short-run. The estimated equation remains stable from the period of 1984 to 2014 as showed by stability tests

Does the Adoption of Climate-Smart Agricultural Practices Impact Farmers’ Income? Evidence from Ghana

People’s lives, particularly farmers’, have been affected by extreme weather conditions that have reduced the yield of numerous crops due to climate change. Climate-smart agriculture practices can reduce or eliminate greenhouse gas emissions and have the propensity to increase farm income and productivity. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to ascertain whether CSA practices impact farmers’ income. This study includes all cocoa farmers in the selected districts in the Ashanti Region. The population includes those who live in the six cocoa production villages. The multistage sampling procedure was considered based on the dominants of literature. The study used an endogenous switching regression framework to examine the effects of the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices (CSAPs) on farmers’ income. While estimating treatment effects, telasso uses lasso techniques to select the appropriate variable sets. The results revealed that gender, farm experience, age, household size, and farm size do not significantly influence the adoption of irrigation and crop insurance. The study revealed a significant positive impact of access to credit on adopting irrigation and crop insurance. The adoption of climate-smart practices has a positive coefficient. This indicates that if all respondents in each region adopts these practices, their income would increase significantly. This study shows that adopting irrigation practices leads to an increase in household income of 8.6% and 11.1%, respectively, for cocoa farmers. Crop insurance has a positive coefficient and is statistically significant on household income, on-farm, and off-farm. This paper shows that climate-smart practices such as crop insurance can positively influence farmers’ income in Ghana. We also conjecture that crop insurance is the most effective and efficient climate-smart practice among the various agricultural practices. The study suggests that access to credit and mass awareness should be compulsory modules coupled with the consistent training of farmers on new technologies for effective policy implementation. Expanding access to extension officers could enhance farmers’ adaptive capacity and warrant the efficiency of implemented practices