Adoption of Conservation Practices: Its Impact on Input Use and Performance in the Northern Region of Ghana

Abstract

Conservation Agriculture (CA) is promoted worldwide on the basis of its contribution to economic, social, and environmental sustainability of agricultural production. In Ghana, despite the increasing interest in the promotion of CA and its practices, its rate of adoption is still low, mainly due to the conflicting evidences regarding its effectiveness. This paper contributes to the numerous debates by examining the impact of CA practices on hired labour, rates of inorganic fertilizers applied by adopters, maize yield, and profit of adopters. Using a cross-sectional data, a multinomial endogenous switching regression (MESR) model was employed to compute the Average Treatment Effect (ATE) and Average Treatment Effect on Treated (ATET) for yield, hired labour, inorganic fertilizer rate, and profit of adopters of CA practices. The study reveals that CA practices impact positively on hired labour employed on the farm, but have a negative impact on profits of adopters. No impact whatsoever of adoption of CA practices is observed on maize yield and also inorganic fertilizer application rates. Technical assistance, and training of farmers on strategies that minimize costs of production must be intensified to raise profits of adopters.