Welfare impact of pesticides management practices among smallholder cocoa farmers in Ghana

Abstract

The simultaneous adoption of pesticides management practices has the potential of boosting productivity and improving the welfare of smallholder cocoa farmers in Ghana. This study identified the factors influencing farmers' choice of the combination options of pesticides management practices using cross-sectional data randomly collected from 838 cocoa farm households. The results from the multinomial logit model revealed that farmers' decision to adopt insecticides only, fungicides only or a combination of the two is influenced by different socio-economic, farm-specific and institutional factors as well as farmers' perception about incidence of pests and diseases on their farms. Using both multinomial endogenous switching regression (MESR) framework and the inverse-probability-weighted regression adjustment (IPWRA) estimator, the adoption of pesticides management practices improves households' welfare. However, the highest payoff was achieved when insecticides and fungicides were adopted simultaneously. The results of the study implies that farm-level cocoa-specific programmes such as Cocoa Disease and Pest Control Programme (CODAPEC) promoting the use of pesticides to improve productivity in Ghana's cocoa industry should be strengthened to enhance the simultaneous adoption of both insecticides and fungicides.