Agricultural Innovation and Resource Management in Ghana

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This project entails an intensive program of field research in Ghana. The goal of the research is to formally model the incentives individuals face with respect to land resource management in an area faced with ecological stress. The farming system in the study area is undergoing a remarkable transformation from an established system of maize and cassava intercropping to intensive vegetable production. The primary challenge in this transition is finding techniques which will maintain soil fertility under the new cropping system. Three central economic issues arise. First, the development of innovative methods of fertility maintenance is characterized by social learning i.e. farmers know of each other's experiments. Second, there is a close relationship between property rights (vested critically in the individuals within the household) and incentives to apply techniques for soil fertility maintenance. Finally, decision-making with respect to soil fertility maintenance depends critically upon characteristics of the markets, and in particular the capital markets available to farmers. The fieldwork consists of three simultaneous and interactive components. One is a multi-round survey to collect the basic data required for econometric analysis. The first rounds of the survey will use questionnaires that have already developed. These questionnaires will be modified or dropped, and new survey instruments added, as the theoretical framework that seems most appropriate changes. A second component, therefore, is continued theoretical work in response to the incoming questionnaires and to observations from less formal conversations between myself and survey participants. These less formal interactions are the third component of the fieldwork, one that is aimed at developing a descriptive characterization of the institutions in the study area which are most relevant for decision making with respect to land resource management.