Knowledge, perception and willingness to pay for faecal waste reuse in agriculture by farmers in the Ningo-Prampram and Shai-Osudoku Districts of Ghana
Loading...
Date
2015-07-12
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Food production in Africa suffers from numerous constraints, including diminishing arable
land, poor land tenure system, and declining soil fertility. Other constraints include limited
irrigation facilities, dwindling water resources, climate variability, unimproved yields and,
above all, high cost of agricultural inputs, particularly fertilizer. High rate of soil fertility
decline and consistent lower crop yields necessitate increased use of fertilizer for food
production. However, high cost of inorganic fertilizer prevents resource-poor farmers from
using required fertilizer levels for production. The need for alternative soil amelioration to
chemical fertilizer therefore becomes very necessary. Faecal compost (FC) is one of the
organic compost that contains enough nutrients for plant growth in addition to its soil
conditioning properties. This study which was conducted in the Ningo-Prampram and Shai-
Osudoku Districts, utilized choice experiment to elicit famers‘ willingness to pay for faecal
compost. Farmers Knowledge and perception about faecal waste reuse in agriculture was
also assessed. Results obtained shows that farmers have relatively low level of experience
on faecal compost use as compared to cow dung. Also, farmers perceive FC as having good
nutrient value compared to other organic fertilizer, however, they do not know for sure,
whether food consumers will reject/accept food commodities produced through the use of
faecal waste. Conditional Logit and hybrid conditional logit model estimates of the choice
experiment data shows that farmers are interested in using FC and are willing to pay.
Willingness to pay was influenced by some respondent‘s socio-economic factors such as
age, educational level, household size Income among others and choice invariant factors
such as experience with FC and cow dung.
Description
A thesis submitted to the Department of Agricultural Economics Agribusiness & Extension,
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of
Master of Philosophy in Agricultural Economics
2015