Empirical Analysis of Determinants of Poverty Among Farmers in Rural Northern Ghana

Abstract

In the northern parts of Ghana, the prevalence of extreme poverty is threatening security of household food and nutrition. Deprivation is more extreme compared to the southern territories of the country. Though poverty is more of a rural phenomenon, its severity is much prominent among farmers living in the rural savannah enclave of the northern territories. In line with the universal declaration of human rights, some forms of commitments have been made to ameliorate the living conditions of the poor people. However, in spite of large number of state and privately initiated poverty alleviation programmes, the levels of poverty remain significantly high in the northern part of Ghana. The impact of such intervention programmes towards poverty reduction in the region is modest. This study seeks to evaluate the possible causes of poverty among smallholder farmers in rural northern Ghana. The study used data from a recent survey of 420 smallholder farmers in five randomly selected districts of northern region, Ghana. The study applied multi-stage sampling strategy to select 420 famers from 188,275 farmers in the five selected districts of the northern region of Ghana. The study applied simple random sampling and purposive sampling techniques as part of the multi-stage sampling process. Five districts were selected at random in the first level and the second stage involved a selection of six farming communities in each of the five districts. Purposive sampling technique was then used to identify the required number of farmers. Analytically, logit regression estimation was applied to establish the strength of the correlation between the independent variables and the dependent variable (poverty). The survey revealed that the most important determining factors of household poverty were labour force (workforce), gender, farm experience, assistance to farmers, access to farm lands (land holding) and dependency ratio. As far as the literature search on the subject is concerned, the author is convinced that this study is the first of its kind to examine the determinants of poverty among smallholder farmers in the northern Ghana.