Abstract

Due to the persistent nature of food insecurity in northern Ghana, Ghana Government over the years has implemented policies aimed at achieving food security. Nonetheless, these policies have their inherent biases, therefore, defeat some of their intended purposes. This study sought to assess the complementarities and trade-offs of smallholder famers’ local knowledge (LK) of farming and modern approaches (MA) proposed by Northern Rural Growth Programme and Medium Term Agriculture Sector Investment Plan in their agricultural production. Mixed method research was used for this study. Five communities were randomly selected for Focus Group Discussion (FGDs) with a total sample size of 91. FGD and semi structured interview guides were used to collect data. Data were analysed using SPSS and Thematic Content Analysis (TCA). Out of 7 agricultural production knowledge identified, LK in weather prediction, farm implements, and soil fertility management were used to support MA both in FGD’s and interviews representing 96.7%, 86.8 % and 79.1 % respectively, whereas LK was traded-off in livestock and poultry rearing, storage methods/facilities, seeds and farm labour during FGD’s and interviews representing 100%, 89.0%, 100% and 86.8% respectively. The MA’s have the potential to decrease food insecurity, however, policy makers must consider farmers in policy formulation and implementation.

1. Introduction

According to the FAO et al. ¹ the world is progressing neither towards SDG target 2.1, of ensuring access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food for all people all year round, nor towards target 2.2, of eradicating all forms of malnutrition, since the number of people suffering from food insecurity continues to increase ^{1, 2}, albeit slowly with about 2001. 1 million people experiencing food insecurity at a severe or moderate level in the world, with Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa alone accounting for about 674.5 million and 605.4 million of people experiencing food insecurity ¹. Taken together, global population growth and changing demographic patterns together with income growth will increase pressure on food supplies ^{3, 4}, not forgetting the effects of climate change. Below in Figure 1 is a summary of statistics regarding the increasing trends of food insecurity across the world particularly with much focus on Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa.

According to Ruel et al. ⁵, agriculture is the foremost means to ensure that there is food security. However, the agriculture sector in Ghana is yet to contribute to self-sufficiency in the production of food ⁶ since according to WFP et al. ⁷, there were about 3.6 million implied food insecure people in Ghana in the year 2012, of which 5.2 percent representing 1.6 million people are severely food insecure, and 6.5 percent representing 2 million people been moderately food insecure as at the beginning of the year 2020. As alluded to by ^{3, 4} regarding the threat of demographic trends to the supply of food in the world, the Ghana Statistical Service ⁸ has also opined that due to a 2.5% annual population growth rate, food demand is expected to continue to rise, resulting in food shortages, particularly during lean seasons. The five northern regions have continued to record the highest incidences of poverty, food insecurity and malnutrition ^{7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14}, with prevalence rate exceeding 20 percent ⁹ in the country.

In response to the food insecurity situation in the country, particularly in the northern regions of Ghana, various governments have implemented policies, strategies, and programmes aimed at achieving food security indicators as well as poverty reduction ¹⁵ since programmes on food security will lead to an increase in food productivity as well as improve food distribution to vulnerable groups and enhance nutrition to the people of Ghana, including the people of Northern of Ghana ¹⁶. Some of these include the Medium-Term Agricultural Development Programme (MTADP, 1991-2000), Agriculture Services Sector Investment Programme (AgSSIP, 2000-2006), Food and Agriculture Sector Development Policies (FASDEP I and II, 2011-2016), Northern Rural Growth Programme (NRGP, 2008-2016) and Medium-Term Agriculture Sector Investment Plan I & II, 2011-2017 etc.

Nonetheless, the agricultural and rural development policies, programmes and projects that have been implemented over the years have their inherent biases in their formulation and implementation, and as such, defeat some of their intended purposes ^{17, 18}. For instance, agricultural development projects in Ghana just like other African countries have primarily followed the input-output development model, which argues that a country's technological, economic and social growth may be induced externally ¹⁹. These input-output-based models are created on research stations in optimal locations with access to all necessary inputs, as such, programmes based on these models only often identify beneficiaries who receive a range of inputs that are intended to bring about development ²⁰ without necessarily considering the local knowledge of beneficiaries.

Empirically, these inherent biases are characterised in most Ghanaian agricultural policies as vulnerable and marginalised populations (mostly smallholder farmers and beneficiaries of the various policies) are mostly excluded in the formulation and implementation policies as alluded to by Botchway ²¹ in the case of NORRIP, Demi and Kuwornu ¹⁸; Yawson ²² in the case of the Fertilizer Subsidy Programme (FSP), Babu and Blom ²³ in the case of FASDEP II, Saa-Dittoh ²⁴ in the case of METASIP, Garba ²⁵ in the case of NRGP etc. These various policies can therefore be censured for lack of real evidence-base, and are therefore most unlikely to meet required and expected outcomes due to lack of ownership.

Since farmers are the main land managers and their production decisions crucially affect crop outputs ²⁶, the inherent biases of these policies/programmes have resulted in smallholder farmers having to complement or trade-off their local knowledge with some of these polices/programmes’ interventions in their largely subsistence production processes. Thus, while modern policies/programmes are very much needed and helpful especially in this era of technology and climate change, particularly when they get to the targeted farmer beneficiaries’ at the right time and place with the needed technical guidance and advice, their inherent biases makes them difficult to be fully implemented and accessed by beneficiaries, and so farmers opt to complement the services provided by modern approaches with their local knowledge in order to ensure they are food secure. Based on the policy interventions implemented by METASIP and the NRGP^{1} to ensure food security, this study sought to assess how smallholder farmers have utilised their local knowledge of agricultural production to ensure food security in the Upper West Region of Ghana (See Appendix C for a summary of policies and interventions’).

2. Definition of Key Terms

Food security in this study refers to the availability of food for smallholder farmers to make use of.

Local Knowledge in this study refers to the traditional practices of agricultural production that smallholder farmers practice to ensure food security

Modern Approaches refers agricultural production interventions introduced by government and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (METASIP and NRGP).

Complementarity refers to the situation where modern approaches and local knowledge supplement each other to contribute to food securiAty.

Trade-Offs in this study occurs when local knowledge of agricultural production are forfeited for the use of modern agricultural approaches..

3. Methodology

The research area is the north-western part of Ghana, specifically the Upper West Region (UWR) with coordinates 10.2530º N, 2.1450º W. The UWR has great potential to serve as the food basket for the country because of its hardworking people and untapped arable land. The Upper West Region covers a geographical area of approximately 18,478 square kilometres. This constitutes about 12.7 per cent of the total land area of Ghana. The Region is bordered on the North by the Republic of Burkina Faso, on the East by Upper East Region, on the South by the Savanna and Northern regions and on the West by Cote d’Ivoire. Below in Figure 2 is the map showing the geographic position of the UWR of Ghana.

The Upper West Region is an agrarian region where 84,931 households are engaged in agricultural activities ³⁰. Agriculture is highly dependent on rains; hence, the rainy season remains the busiest period when a lot of clearing and planting of crops are done ^{30, 31}. Generally, a farmer from the UWR is a peasant farmer with approximately 25 acres for farming; their output used for subsistence or commercial purposes ³⁰. Maize and rice are the most cultivated crops; however, soybean cultivation is been adopted for use as a cash crop ³². As is typical for all the northern regions, livestock are integrated into the farming systems, a practice known as mixed farming ³².

In this study, a cross sectional survey design was adopted using a mixed method research approach. The study area has eleven (11) administrative units; ten districts and one municipality. FGD guide and structured interview guide were the instruments used for data collection. However, because of the dispersed nature of the districts coupled with the cost and time constraints in writing this paper, the researchers grouped the study area into 8 clusters. Cluster 1 comprised of Nandom, Lawra, Lambusie Kani, and Jirapa. Cluster 2 included: Sissala West while cluster 3 comprised of Sissala East. The clusters, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 included: Nadoli-Kaleo, Dafiama Bussie, Wa West, Wa municipality and Wa East respectively. These clusters were done based on proximity and homogeneity of the areas in terms of culture and farm practices. Out of the 8 clusters, 5 clusters were selected using simple random sampling. Four districts and one municipality were sampled from the 5 clusters. While Wa East, Wa West, Sissala East and Sissala West districts were selected conveniently, Lawra was selected using simple random sampling. Simple random sampling was then used to select 3 communities in each district using the lottery system, thus, 15 communities in all. Out of the 15 sampled communities, 5 were randomly selected for Focus Group Discussion (FGDs) to gather data. These communities were: Tokaali, Manwe, Jeffisi, Sakai and Lawra-Yagtuori. The number of the districts, communities and sample size of the smallholder farmers (both males and females) are shown in Table 1.

Schurink et al. ³³ define focus group as a purposive discussion of a topic or related topics taking place between people with similar background and common interests. Accordingly, in this study, since the researchers were interested in exploring the complementarities and trade-offs of smallholder farmers’ local knowledge and approaches promoted by METASIP and NRGP, a FGD and face to face interviews were used to collect data. The FGDs (2 each, 1 for males and the other for females) were conducted in each of the selected areas (Tokaali, Manwe, Jeffisi, Sakai and Yagtuori). The constituted members for the FGDs were between 8 to 11 which is within the required number of 8-12 according to Schurink et al. ³³. Each FGD lasted for between, 1 hour-1 hour: 30 minutes which is in line with the recommended 1-2 hours’ time frame for FGD ³⁴, whereas the interviews with individual respondents lasted between 8-15 minutes.

In order to effectively discuss the smallholder farmers’ local knowledge and their complementarity and trade-off decisions on agricultural production, the study took into consideration the smallholder farmer production knowledge prior, during and after farming based on interventions promoted by METASIP and NRGP. As such the following seven (7) variables were identified during the focus group discussions and therefore considered for further assessment: weather prediction, storage methods/facilities, seeds, farm implements, livestock and poultry rearing methods, farm labour and soil fertility management. Qualitative data were analysed using Thematic Content Analysis (TCA) procedure and presented in conceptual themes and narrations. Also, the use of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) was used to analyse quantitative data descriptively using frequencies and percentages, chi-square and correlation tests.

4. Results and Discussion

This part of the study sought to ascertain smallholder farmers’ local knowledge and their complementary and trade-off decisions on agricultural production. However, correlation analysis was first conducted to show the relation between the local agricultural production knowledge revealed during both FGD’s and interview sessions in the course of the study. Below in Table 2 and Table 3 are the results.

The Table 2 above shows a perfect correlation (1.00) among same local agricultural production knowledge, however, production knowledge between other different production knowledge revealed either moderate correlation, depicted by *or high correlation, depicted by ** respectively.

The results in Table 3 below reveal that local knowledge system of agriculture production was observed in some aspects of agricultural production and absent in other aspects.

In Table 3 above, the results indicate that farmers supported their local knowledge with that of modern approaches in their effort to ensure food security in three areas. These areas were weather predictions, farm implements and soil fertility management. However, local knowledge in livestock and poultry rearing, storage methods/facilities, seeds and farm labour were traded off for modern approaches.

According to the participants in the study, though the utilisation of local knowledge of agriculture production has declined compared to the periods of their forefathers, doing away entirely with local knowledge of farming cannot completely be possible due to its importance in ensuring food security, similar to ^{3, 35} who revealed that local knowledge is useful and capable of tackling contemporary agricultural production problems in order to ensure food security. Below in Table 4 are the results of smallholder farmers’ complementarities of local knowledge and modern approaches in the various sampled communities and districts considered in the study.

Regarding smallholder farmers’ local knowledge, particularly weather prediction, the study found that respondents had developed a sense of understanding of their weather through observations and therefore, were able to tailor their cultivation to meet the weather conditions in the midst of the changing climate, similar to ^{3, 36} who found that local people possess vast knowledge of climate and its variability and are able to model their food production system to meet the changing production needs even though predictions are not always right which has a negative effect on agricultural production assenting to ³⁷ who found that irregular and unreliable patterns of rainfall account for food insecurity and poverty prevalence. As such, according to majority of FGD participants and individual respondents (96.7%), they more often than not used their local knowledge of predicting the weather together with the services provided by the Ghana Meteorological service (GMS) which is not also always accurate to give some balance to their farming or planting decisions. During a female FGD in Manwe, below is a narration of a participant on an account of complementing local knowledge and modern knowledge:

The rainfall season has been reduced intermittently below four months cultivation period. Thus, the rainfall pattern has changed beyond normal. Though it is possible to predict the rainfall, it is now highly unlikely, due to its variation from year to year. So, what we do now is to predict based on our own observations and also contact the GMS to also give us their predictions. So, at the end of the day we plan our farming activities to fit in to the two predictions so that we do not lose much.

In a separate discussion, a female participant in Jeffisi stated:

It is always good to have two options so that if one does not work the other would work for you. That is how we look into predicting the weather so, we use both traditional methods and the information from the GMS.

Also, smallholder farmers’ employed local knowledge with that of modern approaches of farming in the use of farm implements in their agricultural production efforts, representing 86.8 percent of total respondents. This was confirmed by majority of participant of FGD’s held across all the communities in the study. From the study, though farmers generally revealed during FGD’s that they wished to trade-off local knowledge; use of farm implements such as hoes, bulls, cutlasses etc., they could not entirely do so because of the heavy cost involved in acquiring or hiring modern farm implements, the unavailability of modern implement (tractors) as well as some other reasons including the unavoidable use of local farm implements. Speaking to the cost issue, a participant in Manwe said:

Imagine a farmer using bulls to plow 50 acres of farm land. How long will he or she take to do that? Or with the use of a hoe, how long will the farmer take to finish? But the fact is, the cost involved in buying implements such as tractors, combine harvesters etc. is just too abnormal a cost for smallholder farmers like us. What we do to lessen our burden is to hire some of these modern implements to do the plowing especially the tractor, which is not even easy, so that subsequently, we can be using the hoes small-small to tidy the farm.

This finding is similar to ³⁸ who found that smallholders lack incentives to adopt modern technology in the case of mechanization due to the cost involved.

Furthermore, a male participant in Jeffisi revealed this reason why he complements local knowledge with modern approaches like tractor use:

You see, tractor owners often weigh how much they would earn when they visit your farm to provide services. If they realise it won’t benefit them they will not come and a farmer would be forced to use the local mode of plowing.

This is also in consonance with ³⁸ who found that tractor owners and operators are reluctant to go to locations of farmers who demand tractor services for just 2-3 acres of land because of the additional fuel and time consumed by travel to those locations.

In another FGD in Yagtuori, participants revealed that the use of traditional or local farm implements could not be completely ignored because of their uses. Below is what one of the female participants said:

No farming implement whether local or modern is useless. Imagine that after plowing with a tractor and planting your seedlings and watch them grow, can you use the tractor again to clear off weeds in the farm? Not at all. So, you see, both local and modern farm implements complement each other in order to ensure good harvest at the end of the farming season.

Soil fertility management was the third variable respondents complemented their local knowledge with modern approaches representing 79.1 percent of total respondents and majority participants of the various FGD’s in the study. Particularly, participants’ FGD’s explained that the use of local knowledge in ensuring soil fertility comes at no cost especially in the case of mulching but sometimes very difficult to get in large quantities. Therefore, the use of chemical fertilizer has become obvious in recent times through the efforts of the Non-governmental Organisation and the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA). Due to the ability of respondents to develop local manure but in limited quantity, similar to ³⁹ who found that smallholder farmers possessed skills that manifested in the development of fodder into manure, participants in this study stated that they had to complement this effort (use of local manure) with the use of chemical fertilizer. Below is a narration of a male participant in an FGD in Manwe:

We farmers have been conscientised by the Agricultural officers against the removal of grasses and dried leaves from farmlands’ during farmlands clearance but cover them with sand to decompose. This practice is an old one we farmers in Manwe and its surroundings have been practicing ever since we started farming but did not value it. We learnt this from our parents’ and great grand-parents. But after planting we buy the chemical fertilizer to further boost the soil fertility because mulching can no longer be possible.

Also, in a different FGD particularly in Yagtuori, this is what one of the participants had to say:

… It is not even about us here, the officials of the Ministry of food and agriculture and the NGOs officials have advised us not to clear our lands and throw the grass away. They advised us to plough the land with the grass. When the grass is covered by the sand, they will rot and will serve as manure for the crops. Thereafter, we use the modern fertilizer to supplement when crops germinate to a certain point. So, with regards to soil fertility enhancement, the practice of both local methods and modern fertilizer application are been employed in the course of our farming

These findings support that of ^{39, 40} who postulate that the application of indigenous knowledge practices such as manure, composting and mulching play a crucial role in soil fertility management. Thus, manure is used by indigenous people to sustain fertility since not all nutrients are released from the manure in one season. Rather, nutrients are retained in the crop fields or gardens for the next planting season ⁴¹.

After having found the complementarities of local knowledge and modern approaches of smallholder farmers’ agricultural production, this part of the study sought to find out whether there were any relations between respondents community of stay, age, sex, level of education and years of experience in farming and farmers complementary decision. Below in Table 5 are the results

From the Table 5, above there is no evidence of a relationship between smallholder farmers’ demographic characteristics including: Community, Age, Sex, Education and Experience in years of farming and their complementary decisions in the Upper West Region of Ghana (Chi-square = .342a, .139a, .018a., .867a, and .535a, df 4, 2, 1,2 and 2, p> .0.05) respectively.

The study found several trade-offs; as farmers were observed to have partially abandoned some local knowledge of agriculture production for modern approaches of production in order to improve food availability, eliminate hunger and reduce poverty at their individual households’ levels. The areas of trade-offs included seed crop varieties, livestock and poultry rearing, storage methods and farm labour. Below in Table 6 are the results of smallholder farmers’ trade-offs of local knowledge for modern approaches in the various sampled communities and districts considered in the study.

From the study, as revealed in the Table 6 above, it was revealed by participants of FGD’s and individual respondents (100%) that cultivation with modern improved seed crop varieties was used at the expense of local or traditional seed crop varieties to ensure better harvest among smallholder farmers which is contrary to ⁴² who revealed that only 22.8 percent interviewed farmers used modern seeds in surveyed villages in Bihar. According to the smallholder farmers especially participants of FGD’s, the improved seed crop varieties better fit the short rainfall pattern, lasting for the period of about three (3) months. This is similar to ^{43, 44, 45, 46} who discovered that newly breed varieties of staple cereals contributed significantly to yields as they matured quickly and therefore permitted two or three crops to be grown each year.

Going by one of the men in a FGD in Sakai, below is what he had to say:

The introduction of new agricultural innovations such as the improved variety of seeds have made farming less worrisome. As for the Agric seeds, it seems they understand the weather. Even if the rains disappoint, they will still manage to yield something.

In same FGD, another man added:

Our traditional seeds take a long time to mature but the seeds from the Agric people mature early so, we don’t use our traditional seeds any longer

Notably however, participant farmers indicated that they still cultivate traditional food crop varieties of some cereals such as the millet and maize, mainly for traditional ceremonies like funerals and festivals because of their delicious taste

Likewise, majority of respondents (100%) and participants of FGD’s in the study revealed that local livestock and poultry rearing was traded-off for modern approaches of livestock and poultry rearing. During FGD’s in the course of the study, it was largely indicated that the trade-offs come in different forms. These forms summarily range from poultry feed to livestock housing and to livestock treatment. Below is what one of the female FGD participant in Jeffisi had to say on why poultry farmers have traded-off their local practices of feeding:

…Growing up, it was so cheap rearing fowls because the cost of feeding them was almost free. We used to feed with termites and worms but now we rely on maize and other cereals because, the rapid development of settlements have made these worms and termites almost nonexistent. Now you can only get these worms in the deep bushes and we can’t go to the bushes or allow our fowls to go to the bushes to feed because of growing theft cases.

From the study again, participants of FGD across the various districts traded-off their local treatment of livestock for modern veterinary services. Below is what one of the female participants in a FGD in Tokaali had to say:

Trading-off our local treatment for modern veterinary services make sense and is more effective. In times past, the treatment was general, but now when you go to the veterinary, they are able to tell exactly what is wrong with your animal. So, the veterinary services are better.

Also, the study found that majority of smallholder farmers (89.0%) together with participants of FGD’s responded to have traded-off their local knowledge of storing their food crops for modern methods such as Purdue Improved Crop Storage (PICS), warehouses and cocoa sacks, contrary to ³⁵ who observed that local farmers utilised their local knowledge system in the entire food crop production systems including storage.

A male farmer from Yagtuori recounts this below:

Our reason for trading-off our olden days' storage methods is due to the difficulty in constructing them (the silos and the big pots). In constructing the silos, it is labour intensive since you require women to carry water, soak the Visim (sliming) tree for some weeks and also get a technical expert to construct it, but with the introduction of PICs and cocoa sacks and recently warehouses, there is no need to go through this hustle of building silos again

Again, in a separate FGD in Jeffisi, a female participant had this to say:

The challenge of our local or traditional storage practice of using silos is that it is risky. If a silo is not well constructed it can collapse with the produce inside it and that would mean poverty and hunger. However, same cannot be said for modern storage facilities like the PICs and cocoa sacks. As a result, we have decided as farmers to stop using the silos but rather make use of the modern storage methods.

Equally, given that the extended family system has demised in contemporary times, individual smallholder farmers representing 86.8 percent and participants’ of FGD’s indicated that they prefer enrolling their children into formal education than to using them as farm labour and this is applicable majority of households in the study areas. During FGD’s organised across the sampled communities, it was found that sending household members of school going age to school was considered an investment especially when the educated ones grow up to be responsible. This, participants stated citing instances of how some households or families are benefiting from sending their children to school financially and assets wise. For that matter, even though farm size might reduce, they prefer sending their children and wards to school. Below is what a female FGD participant in Manwe said:

Household members who are gainfully employed through education assist in purchasing farm inputs and also taking care of the family when the need be. As a result, most households prefer enrolling their wards to school who could assist them in the farming activities and other needs such as health.

From the perspectives of a woman FGD participant in Tokaali, she had this to say:

You see how we are struggling as farmers in the village here. It is all because of education. There are some common things that could have helped us farmers to improve food security and reduce poverty but we are unable to know or do because we are not educated. In addition, an educated child has the potential to earn regular source of income which can be used to support the family.

In addition, a male participant from Yagtuori explained:

In this current generation, schooling is key and so it is difficult to easily find labour. Even the few labour available is not preferred these days because of modern farm implements, because they perform the roles even better than the human labour with efficiency

This finding can be related to ⁴⁷ who found that mechanization reduces male family labour use and hired male workers by about 0.13 and 0.425 per acre over a season.

This part of the study sought to find out whether there were any relations between respondents’ community of stay, age, sex, level of education and years of experience in farming and smallholder farmers’ trade-off decisions. Below in Table 7 are the results.

Similar to the relations between smallholder farmers’ demographic characteristic and their complementarity decisions, the Table 7 above also reveal no evidence of a relationship between smallholder farmers’ demographic characteristics including: Community, Age, Sex, Education and years of farming Experience and their trade-off decisions in the Upper West Region of Ghana (Chi-square = .354a, 1.613a, 3.061a, 1.136a, and 3.168a, df 4, 2, 1, 2 and 2, p> .0.05) respectively

Out of these seven (7) variables identified in the study, it is revealed that three (3) Local knowledge of farming were reported to be complements with modern acts of farming whilst the other four (4) local knowledge were reported to be traded-off for modern approaches. Thus, the findings depict that due to the modern approach systems’ potential to increase yield and decrease food insecurity, they have attained dominance over the local knowledge systems among farmers. The dominance of modern knowledge systems gives credence to the findings of ⁴⁸ that modern government structures and rural development projects emphasises on government agent's knowledge and capability, and in so doing devalue rural peoples' knowledge, capability and responsibility for their own environment but contradicts ³⁹ who revealed that local agriculture production is fundamental for rural people, as such, knowledge systems and experiences are acquired from past generations by individuals and groups and nurtured into skills for routine use and subsequent transfer.

• Government should enhance smallholder farmers understanding in modern agriculture approaches, and as well activate the initiatives of the farmers in the process of modernising agriculture.

• Government should ensure that any agricultural food policy formulated and implemented is tailored towards a specific group. This would ensure equity of access and distribution of interventions which would encourage farmers to strengthen production input.

Note

{1} While METASIP was an ambitious and wide-ranging plan that aimed to modernize agriculture and structurally transform the economy, through strengthening food security and preparedness, providing employment opportunities and reducing poverty ²⁷, NRGP, was an IFAD/AfDB-sponsored programme initiated by the government of Ghana with an overall goal of contributing to equitable and sustainable poverty reduction among rural households in host districts with emphasis on increasing incomes of rural households in the target areas on sustainable basis ²⁸.

References