Abstract
AbstractThe study examines the effects of adoption of sustainable land management practices on farm households’ technical efficiency (TE) and environmental efficiency, using household-level data from Ghana. We employ selectivity biased-corrected stochastic production frontier to account for potential bias from both observed and unobserved factors. The empirical results show that adopters exhibit higher levels of TE and output, compared with the nonadopters. However, the results reveal that adopters are found to use excess herbicides that could have adverse environmental consequences. The results also reveal that extension services and access to credit positively and significantly correlate with TE.
Highlights
The agricultural sector in Ghana is dominated by smallholders cultivating less than 2.5 ha on average (Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), 2016)
We examined the impact of adoption of Sustainable Land Management (SLM) on technical and environmental efficiency among smallholder farmers in Ghana
The metafrontier estimates showed that SLM technology adopters are 7.5% more technically efficient than the nonadopters
Summary
The agricultural sector in Ghana is dominated by smallholders cultivating less than 2.5 ha on average (Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA), 2016). To address the low agricultural productivity and environmental problems, government, with the support of multilateral institutions, has undertaken policies and initiated projects that aim at conserving agricultural land resources and reducing rural poverty (MoFA, 2016; Nkonya, Mirzabaev, and von Braun, 2016). Farmers in Ghana use Roundup (glyphosate-based herbicide) for weed control and sometimes apply it to facilitate drying of plants for harvesting purposes It is employed by many farmers as the main land preparation method in minimum and zero-tillage farming systems, with significant economic benefits in terms of reduction in labor costs (Boahen et al, 2007). In SSA countries, including Ghana, studies that discuss the effects of adoption of SLM practices on farmers’ technical efficiency (TE) and excess herbicide use (environmental inefficiency) are quite rare. The final section presents conclusions and policy implications (Section 5)
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