Analysis of socio-economic factors influencing household food security among small holder vegetable farmers. a case study of Tano-South district, Brong-Ahafo region of Ghana
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Date
August, 2015
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Abstract
This study set out to investigate the socio-economic factors influencing smallholder vegetable farmers’ household food security and food insecurity coping mechanisms in the Tano South district of the Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana. The data was obtained through personal interviews by the use of structured questionnaires. Descriptive statistics was used to identify the spread of the observations and the outlying values and distinctive patterns whiles the logistic regression model was used to determine the factors influencing household food security with twenty independent variables. Households applied short-term consumption and income coping strategies to cope with food shortages and income shocks. Using the Item Response Indicator (Bickel et al., 2000), the vegetable farmers could generally be considered food insecure without hunger. From the logistic regression, eight variables were found to be significant at the 1, 5, and 10 percent significance levels. And all the variables had their expected signs. Vegetable production represent a viable instrument for coping with food security because of the relatively short cycle of the crops in question, and thus help improve household resilience in the event of food shortage. Hence, direct measures for improving food security, such as access to credit to boost production and cultivating more than one type of vegetable crop, are likely to become priorities.
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Thesis submitted to the Department of Agricultural Economics, Agribusiness and Extension, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Agricultural Economics Faculty of Agriculture College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, 2015