Determinants of Cocoa Production in the Ashanti Region

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Date
MARCH, 2013
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Abstract
The economic benefits of cocoa in Ghana include foreign exchange, employment and provision of raw materials for both domestic and international industries. For these reasons, there has been a government intervention in the cocoa industry that brought forth policies including high producer price and also cocoa pest and disease control programme (CODAPEC) to stimulate cocoa production. However, studies investigating factors influencing cocoa production in Ghana are very scarce. This thesis fitted Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and Weighted Least Squares (WLS) modelling techniques to cross section data obtained from 251 farmers. The respondents were selected using purposive sampling technique. Questionnaires were administered to respondents and the items consisted of farmers characteristics (production years, Gender, education) and farm characteristics (Farm size, family labour, hired labour, Farm age, fertilizer, mass spraying, insecticides, Total Revenue and type of seed). The dependent variable was output. The regression results showed an adjusted co-efficient of determination of 0.96. It was found that the total revenue and hired labour variables had significant influence on cocoa production. Both variables were significant at 1%. The number of times of mass spraying and farm size variables were statistically insignificant. This study could have important policy implication for government to increase producer price of cocoa.
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A thesis submitted to the School of Graduate Studies, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the award of Master of Philosophy in Economics, March.
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