Browsing by Author "Larbi, Isaac Kakraba"

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    Assessing the factors influencing IPM adoption in Ghana: the case of vegetable farmers in the Kumasi metropolis
    (November, 2015) Larbi, Isaac Kakraba
    Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is an approach used to enhance crop production. Although most IPM practices or technologies have proven to be relevant, their adoption have been found to be less among smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, including Ghana. This study examines the adoption of two IPM practices, namely, pesticide application and pest monitoring with a cross-sectional data collected on 300 vegetable farmers from five vegetable farm sites in the Kumasi metropolis of Ghana in 2012. The multinomial logit model was employed in the empirical analysis to examine the factors which influence the adoption of the existing IPM practices among the vegetable farmers. The empirical results indicate that age, education, membership of FBO, farm size, contract farming, employed hired labour, availability of hired labour, perception of labour cost and extension visit had positive influence on adoption of pesticide application only. Household size, dependency ratio, distance traveled to pesticide sale point had negative effect on pesticide application only. For the adoption of pest monitoring only; age, farm size, contract farming, employed hired labour, availability of hired labour, perception of labour cost and extension visit had a positive effect on its adoption. Distance traveled to pesticide sale point had a negative effect on its adoption. The results also indicate that education, access to credit, membership of FBO, farm size, contract farming, employed hired labour, availability of hired labour and extension visit had a positive effect on the adoption of both practices. Distance traveled to pesticide sale point and access to credit facility had a negative influence on the adoption of both practices. It is recommended, based on the empirical magnitudes and directions of the determinants that the government will draw policies to accommodate some of the input cost through subsidies so that farmers can channel the money spent on input to hiring more labour. Also FBO should be included in IPM training programs