Isaac Gershon Kodwo Ansah

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Senior Lecturer at University for Development Studies

The way economic studies conceptualize and measure resilience is very heterogeneous. This does not only challenge scientific progress, but also raises the question of whether they measure one identical concept with different methods or whether they measure different understandings of resilience. This paper provides a review of concepts, methodologi...

In typical developing countries, a one-size-fits-all policies often tend to hurt the poor and vulnerable. Specifically, in food demand studies different social groupings have characteristically heterogeneous demand functions which may require unique attention in terms of food policies. In this paper, we examine the food demand characteristics of th...

An objective interpersonal comparison of wellbeing requires that people’s capabilities are considered. This paper operationalises Sen’s capability concept in maize-based farming systems and assesses how it influences farmers’ participation in the Planting for Food and Jobs programme in the Bunkpurugu-Yunyoo District of the Northern Region, Ghana. W...

Agricultural productivity growth is considered a key pathway to resolving poverty and food insecurity issues in developing Africa. One such pathway to improving agricultural productivity depends on technology uptake and utilization. A critical binding constraint to technology uptake and utilization is the mode of disseminating improved agricultural...

Agriculture-based livelihoods in developing countries are often challenged by a multitude of unforeseeable shocks, but economic research mostly focuses on single shocks. This paper investigates how climate, health, pest and price shocks individually and in combination relate to farm households’ coping strategy choices. First, we use binary probit m...

Policy interest often focuses on specific instruments that effectively enhance household resilience to food security shocks. Based on microeconomic household demand and resilience theory, this paper investigates to what extent increased household resilience capacities result in household food consumption being more robust to adverse food price and...

This paper assessed the conditions contributing to the success of smallholder farmer groups in northern Ghana using mechanical maize shellers (MMS) based on a collective business model. A sample of 156 farmers from 18 intervention communities was analyzed using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to examine the conditions necessary to increase u...

This paper assessed the conditions contributing to the success of smallholder farmer groups in northern Ghana using mechanical maize shellers (MMS) based on a collective business model. A sample of 156 farmers from 18 intervention communities was analyzed using qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to examine the conditions necessary to increase u...

Purpose Promoted for its inclusivity, agricultural value chain (AVC) financing leverages social capital and mechanisms such as off-take agreements and forward contracts to reduce borrowing and lending costs and risks for both farmers and lending institutions. AVC financing has been defined as the flow of financial products and services to and among...

Multiple covariate shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia–Ukraine conflict, and pre-existing climate shocks pose serious threats to smallholder livelihoods. The cascading effects of these multiple shocks, including rising prices of fertilizers and food imports, have rekindled interest in the call for a policy shift toward agroecology. Agr...

The climate-smart village (CSV) concept is aimed at helping to improve household welfare through better climate change adaptation. This study used data from small ruminant producers in CSV and non-CSV communities of the Lawra and Jirapa municipalities in the Upper West Region of Ghana. First, we assessed how the project related to adoption of clima...

This paper examines how resilience capacity mediates or moderates the relationship between weather shocks and household food security based on two waves of farm household survey and satellite-based weather data in northern Ghana and applying econometric models. Results show that resilience capacity moderate or mediates the negative effects of heat...

Starchy staples are a major source of livelihood support for farmers, traders, and processors who participate in these crops’ value chains, while also providing staple food to many people, especially the less affluent in society. Despite this position, the productivity figures of starchy staples are low. We use a unique data set and meta-frontier e...

This study used PSM and the selectivity-corrected framework for stochastic frontiers to examine how innovative agricultural finance practices of maize farmers in northern Ghana affect economic efficiency. We find, consistently, that users of innovative financing have higher technical (TE), allocative (AE), and economic efficiency (EE) scores than n...

In the absence of governmental welfare support, assets have an important role in determining the capacity of vulnerable households of being resilient against economic shocks affecting their food needs. By focusing on the context of Sub-Saharan Africa, this paper analyses household responses in food demand to shocks affecting their food purchases. W...

Fall armyworm (FAW) infestation and control strategies used by maize farmers in two districts of Ghana’s Upper West Region were studied. We first identified the various strategy maize farmers use to manage FAW infestations from cross-sectional data. Next, we employed a multivariate probit model to analyse factors influencing control strategy choice...

Seasonality influences African informal agricultural markets, but existing literature inadequately explores its interactions with market actors' social relations and livelihood outcomes. Thus, agricultural commercialisation policy ineffectively supports such actors to manage seasonality. Across Bamako, Ouagadougou and Tamale, we conducted interview...

Resilience is now considered as a core concept for addressing the negative effects of shocks on household food security. However, a major barrier to achieving this is that resilience is unobserved and multi-dimensional, which means conceptualizing and empirically assessing it is difficult. This thesis combines literature review and empirical approa...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore smallholder agricultural financing in Ghana’s Northern region by identifying farmers’ preferred traditional and innovative financing methods and estimating the determinants of use of innovative financing methods. Design/methodology/approach This paper presented a list of documented traditional financ...

We examine how goat farmers’ perceptions of weather variability and climate change condition their coping and adaptation behaviour. Through a survey, we obtain a household level data from goat producers in designated climate-smart and non-climate-smart villages of the Lawra and Jirapa districts in Upper West region of Ghana. Data are analysed using...

It is always important to evaluate the performance of agricultural interventions as early as possible in order that subsequent implementation could benefit from lessons learned from successes and failures. This paper examined the effect of participation in Ghana’s Planting for Food and Jobs programme on maize output in the Bunkpurugu-Yunyoo Distric...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how consumers’ concern for food safety and income levels influence vegetable consumption patterns and expenditure in Tamale, Ghana. Design/methodology/approach – Using data from a survey of 300 urban consumers, quantile regression analyses are used to examine how food safety consciousness, income an...

Consumers’ concerns over misuse of agrochemicals and untreated wastewater for irrigation in vegetable production are increasing demand for safer vegetables in urban cities. Providing safer vegetables requires production methods that minimize or eliminate the associated risks. Nevertheless, these practices involve extra cost, which requires that con...

Soybean is an important cash crop with the potential of reducing poverty in the Northern Region of Ghana. Knowledge on the level of economic efficiency and the factors that influence such efficiency is a good beginning for addressing its sustainability problems. The study aimed at analysing economic efficiency of soybean production in the Northern...

Vegetable production in urban and peri-urban areas involves use of wastewater for irrigation and agrochemicals, which pose risks to consumers’ health. To some degree, certification assures consumers of food safety. Certification is costly, requiring consumers to, at least partially, bear the cost. Consumer willingness to pay for certified vegetable...

Postharvest losses are a significant threat to the actors in the yam value chain. In this article, we examined the key postharvest management practices and its effect on the welfare of yam farmers and traders in selected towns of Northern region. We randomly sampled a cross section of farmers and traders for data collection, and analyzed the data w...

This paper examines the socioeconomic determinants of farmer livelihood diversification and its effects on welfare. We selected 184 farmers in the Wa West District of the Upper West Region of Ghana through a comprehensive, multistage process based on agro-ecological, engineering, and socioeconomic resilience/vulnerability profiles. A simultaneous e...

In climate change adaptation, contract farming can facilitate the adoption of coping and adaptation strategies, but such dynamics are less understood in the literature. This study uses primary data collected from a cross section of crop farmers in northern Ghana and a simultaneous equation systems approach to examine the links between contract farm...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of input credit on smallholder farmers’ output and income using Masara N’Arziki support project in Northern Ghana. Design/methodology/approach A cross-sectional primary data set was used to estimate the effect of project participation on farm output, yield and income using propensity sco...

The Northern Sector Action Awareness Centre (NORSAAC), a local NGO in Northern Ghana commissioned a research into the threats and effects of climate change on local livelihoods of the local people, especially women and the youth in four districts of their operational area in the northern region of Ghana. In all, 320 respondents (160 males and 160 f...

This study investigated farmers willingness to pay (WTP) for private irrigation in Nandom district, Ghana. The study randomly sampled 236 farmers and analyzed data using descriptive statistics and ordered logit regression model. Results revealed that 94.5 percent of the farmers were WTP for private irrigation services with a mean of 35.83 cedis. Fa...

Globally, postharvest loss reduction has been emphasized as an effective option for improving food security and environmental sustainability. Yam production in the Zabzugu district of Northern Ghana suffers from high postharvest losses, with varying degrees of economic, social and environmental implications. Improving the welfare of farmers through...

Temporally and spatially disaggregated market price data most useful for analysis, but data problems common, such as missing observations, outliers, short and incomplete series, etc. Cointegration not possible in such a case. Instead of adapting data to suit methods, we propose to adapt method to suit data.

Purpose The study examined the effect of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) Block Farm Credit Programme (BFCP) participation on crop output in four districts in the Northern Region of Ghana. Design/methodology/approach Structured questionnaires were used to collect data from 240 beneficiary and non-beneficiary farmers of BFCP. The Treatme...

Abstract The study examined the factors influencing the adoption of dry season vegetable farming and its effect on income in the Golinga and Bontanga irrigation sites in the Northern Region of Ghana. It involved 240 farmers selected through multi stage sampling procedure and the data analyzed using a switching regression and treatment effect model...

Many farmers request for production credit to improve farm productivity, but are often denied by financial institutions. The rational questions to ask are: What factors characterize farmers who get denied of production credits? Does credit constraint lead to lower yield? This study aims to answer these important but often overlooked questions. A mu...

The study used contingent valuation to solicit monetary values from researchers and farmers on how much they were willing to sell and buy agricultural innovations from research respectively. A probit model was then employed to identify the determinants of researchers’ willingness to sell innovations from research. Furthermore, a multivariate (MV) p...

Postharvest loss reduction has received attention in many policy documents across nations to ensure global food security, particularly in developing countries. Many researchers have examined various options for reducing postharvest losses. We contribute our quota to this scientific discourse by using a different approach. We argue that the human el...

This study analysed the adoption of JICA rice production technologies and its effect on output in Sagnarigu District of the Northern Region. A total of 120 respondents from six communities in the Sagnarigu District were randomly selected and interviewed using semi-structured questionnaires. The logit model was used to determine the factors that inf...

Recent global food price developments have spurred renewed interest in analyzing integration of local markets to global markets. A popular approach to quantify market integration is cointegration analysis. However, local market price data often has missing values, outliers, or short and incomplete series, making cointegration analysis impossible. I...

This study was carried out to investigate the perceptions with respect to the requirments and benefits of microfinance in peri-urban Tamale. A multi-stage sampling technique was employed to select 192 beneficiary and non-beneficiary respondents of microfinance in peri-urban Tamale. Individual Interviews and focus group discusions were used for the...

Vulnerability assessment and reduction are now central to developing a holistic and integrated approach to disaster risk reduction, including mitigating the effects of a disaster. Pre-existing frameworks for mapping vulnerability and planning response to disasters do not completely fit the realities of rural communities in low income countries wher...

The Northern region of Ghana hosts the largest number of livestock producers compared to the other regions, but output is still low despite the introduction of improved technologies which have the potential to increase livestock yields when adopted and provide better livelihoods to participating households. Consequently, adoption of improved techno...

Vulnerability assessment and reduction are now central to developing a holistic and integrated approach to disaster risk reduction, including mitigating the effects of a disaster. Pre-existing frameworks for mapping vulnerability and planning response to disasters do not completely fit the realities of rural communities in low income countries wher...

Recent global food price developments have spurred renewed interest in analyzing integration of local markets to global markets. A popular approach to quantify market integration is cointegration analysis. However, local market price data often has missing values, outliers, or short and incomplete series, making cointegration analysis impossible. I...

Resource allocation influences productivity or profitability of crop enterprises, particularly among smallholder agricultural systems, yet many empirical studies tend to ignore this fact. In this paper, we use profit efficiency measurement as a proxy for comparative advantage to decide the crop for specialization in the Ejura-Sekyedumase District i...

The study analyzes the effects of the determinants of farmer's adoption of and investment in agrochemicals by collecting primary data from 156 sampled cocoa farmers in the Sefwi-Wiawso Municipality of Ghana. Descriptive statistical technique was employed to analyze demographic and farm-specific characteristics as well as the adoption rate and expen...

Limited access to credit is one of the key factors inhibiting the growth of micro-small-medium scale enterprises (MSME’s) in developing countries like Ghana. Hence, this study sought to identify determinants of access to credit and the factors influencing the volume of credit disbursed to MSME’s in Kasoa municipality of Ghana. The study used primar...

This study seeks to explore stakeholders' perceptions, causes, and effects of extreme climatic events, such as droughts and floods, in the Wa West District of Ghana's Upper West Region. A multi-stage sampling procedure is used to select 184 respondents. Data collection methods include individual questionnaire ad-ministration, focus group discussion...

This study seeks to explore stakeholders’ perceptions, causes, and effects of extreme climatic events, such as droughts and floods, in the Wa West District of Ghana’s Upper West Region. A multi-stage sampling procedure is used to select 184 respondents. Data collection methods include individual questionnaire administration, focus group discussions...