AN ASSESSMENT OF ALLOCATIVE EFFICIENCY OF ORGANIC MANGO FARMS IN NORTHERN GHANA
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14738/abr.32.991Abstract
Abstract
Despite numerous government interventions, increasing agricultural productivity to ensure food security still remains a challenge facing Ghana’s agriculture, which is largely conventional, but has a growing organic production and niche market. Since 2001, the Integrated Tamale Fruit Company has been assisting Northern Ghana’s hitherto subsistence farmers to cultivate organic mango through an out-grower scheme aimed at boosting the productivity and market access, and reducing the production cost of farms in the scheme. Anecdotally, the livelihood of organic mango farmers does not seem to have improved, despite significant increases in the performance of participating farms. This study provides empirical evidence on the actual economic performance of organic mango farmers in Northern Ghana and establishes the implications of this for livelihood and empowerment in organic mango farm household by estimating input-use efficiency. By fitting a tranlog average response production function to data from 204 organic mango farms, we obtained input-use efficiency ratios of 1.83 and 1.91 for weeding expenditure incurred by group and family out-growers respectively, and ratios of 0.24 and 0.11 for organic pesticides. The results suggest that to improve their livelihood, farmers need to increase their investment in weeding and reduce that of pesticides use.
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