Technical and resource-use efficiencies of cashew production in Ghana: implications on achieving sustainable development goals

Abstract

The expansion of Ghana’s cashew industry is expected to be a watershed moment in the country’s diversification of agricultural export commodity trade. In Ghana’s cashew farms, however, there is a significant difference between observed and potential farm yield. As a result, empirical study is required to serve as policy guidelines in order to improve farmer’s productive efficiency and, as a necessary consequence, contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of no poverty and zero hunger. The study explores farm-level productive efficiency and factors that can lead to variations in farmer’s technical efficiency in the Bono East region of Ghana. The single-stage double bootstrap Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was used to estimate technical efficiency and its determinants. The estimated results indicate that the average bias-corrected technical efficiency score (33%) was lower than the original average score (51%), suggesting that the original efficiency scores had been skewed upwards. Some of the primary factors that have been reported as having a significant effect on technical efficiency include the gender of respondents, educational attainment, and membership of farmer groups. Results of the resource-use efficiency analysis suggest that cashew farmers in Ghana do not escape the criticisms of inefficient resource allocation. Farm-level policies should be skewed towards enhancing resource-use efficiency through effective capacity-building to improve farmer’s management and technical capabilities, improve farm productivity, and consequently contribute to Ghana's quest to meet the sustainable development goals.