Abstract

Achieving a sustainable food supply is crucial to meet the ever-increasing demand emanating from high population growth, rising consumer incomes, and high rates of urbanisation in developing countries including Ghana. The adoption of farm innovations in these countries has proven to be quintessential to the attainment of self-sufficiency in supply food including rice. Nonetheless, the adoption of farm innovations has been challenging. This paper, therefore, analyses the factors that influence the number of farm innovations adopted by rice farmers in two districts of the Upper East Region of Ghana using the Poisson model. The result indicated that the adoption of individual farm innovations was low. The study showed that farm size, labour input, experience in rice farming, access to extension services, and access to credit exerted significant positive effects on the number of farm innovations adopted, whereas farmer age and distance to market tended to decrease the number of farm innovations used by rice farmers. The study concludes that increasing the number of farm innovations adopted tends to promote a sustainable supply of rice output; therefore, food policy should aim at promoting the adoption of different farm innovations in developing countries including Ghana.

Keywords

adoption; farm innovations; Ghana; Poisson model; rice; sustainable food supply

Published in

Agriculture
2018, Volume: 8, number: 8, article number: 121

UKÄ Subject classification

Economic Geography
Business Administration


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/agriculture8080121

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/123629