Akolgo James Anaba, Osei-Asare Y B, Sarpong D B, Asem Freda E, Quaye Wilhemina
Department of Ecological Agriculture, School of Agriculture, Bolgatanga Technical University, Bolgtanaga, Ghana.
Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana.
PLoS One. 2025 Feb 13;20(2):e0309375. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0309375. eCollection 2025.
The Ghanaian population is aware of the increasing health challenges in our health facilities and the need to consume more vegetables to improve their health status. This, coupled with population growth and changing consumer patterns has led to an increasing demand for vegetable products in Ghana. Smallholder farmers in the country have thus intensified the production of vegetables during the dry season to meet consumers' demand and to generate income. However, their outputs have been lower than the country's potential, so the research was conducted to identify the causes and determinants of the low yields. A total of 322 dry-season vegetable farmers in seven (7) districts in twenty-four (24) communities were selected from the Upper East Region of Ghana using a purposive random sampling technique. The Kumbhakar model was employed to compute the production risk, technical inefficiency and determinants of vegetable production in the region. The study reveals that the input variables: labour, seed, fertilizer, agrochemical and irrigation costs positively are related to the output value of vegetables with an increasing return to scale. In addition, labour, seed and agrochemical costs show a significant production risk-decreasing effect while the risk of vegetable production is reduced with fertilizer and irrigation costs. The study further depicts that extension visits, experience, water pumps and gravity-fed irrigation systems positively affect the technical efficiency of dry-season vegetable production. Again, given the current state of technology and resources available to the farmers, enhancing the vegetable outputs could be achieved by reducing the technical inefficiencies by 27% while considering the effects of production risk. The study concludes that the farmers can improve the output of the vegetable farms for higher income by adopting the best vegetable production practices such as efficient water-saving irrigation technologies and fertilizer usage while adopting the knowledge from the extension training to improve their technical efficiency.
加纳民众意识到本国医疗机构面临的健康挑战日益严峻，也意识到需要多吃蔬菜来改善健康状况。这一点，再加上人口增长和消费者模式的变化，导致加纳对蔬菜产品的需求不断增加。该国的小农户因此加大了旱季蔬菜的产量，以满足消费者需求并增加收入。然而，他们的产量低于该国的潜力，因此开展了这项研究，以确定产量低下的原因和决定因素。采用目的随机抽样技术，从加纳上东部地区的24个社区所在的7个区中，共挑选了322名旱季蔬菜种植农户。采用昆巴卡尔模型来计算该地区蔬菜生产的风险、技术效率低下问题以及决定因素。研究表明，投入变量：劳动力、种子、化肥、农用化学品和灌溉成本与蔬菜产值呈正相关，且规模报酬递增。此外，劳动力、种子和农用化学品成本显示出显著的降低生产风险的效果，而化肥和灌溉成本则降低了蔬菜生产风险。研究进一步表明，推广访问、经验、水泵和重力灌溉系统对旱季蔬菜生产的技术效率有积极影响。同样，考虑到农民目前可获得的技术和资源状况，在考虑生产风险影响的同时，将技术效率低下问题降低27%，就可以提高蔬菜产量。研究得出结论，农民可以通过采用最佳蔬菜生产做法，如高效节水灌溉技术和化肥使用方法，并借鉴推广培训中的知识来提高技术效率，从而提高蔬菜农场的产量，获得更高收入。
