Browsing by Author "Oti Agyekum, Enoch"

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    Knowledge, perception and willingness to pay for faecal waste reuse in agriculture by farmers in the Ningo-Prampram and Shai-Osudoku Districts of Ghana
    (2015-07-12) Oti Agyekum, Enoch
    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.