Rice (Oryza sativa) is an important food staple and a cash crop, which is cultivated in all the ten regions of Ghana under varying agro-ecological conditions. These conditions also reflect the production technologies used and the total farm output. In an attempt to determine the potential sources of production shortfalls on rice farms in Ghana, this paper estimates the production efficiency and the environmental-technology gaps of rice-producing households in the forest-savannah transition and guinea savannah agro-ecological zones of Ghana. The paper adopts the stochastic metafrontier framework, which permits technology-related inefficiency effects to be extricated from managerial inefficiency effects for appropriate policy formulation. In contrast to past studies, the empirical findings reveal that farms in the two agro-ecological zones adopt heterogeneous production technologies due to differences in their production environments. This is indicated by the estimated mean environmental-technology gap ratios of 0.95 and 0.50, and mean metafrontier technical efficiencies of 0.56 and 0.42 for farms in the forest-savannah transition and guinea savannah zones, respectively. These findings call for agricultural policy formulation in Ghana to be targeted at the prevailing environmental conditions of the various agro-ecological zones rather than being all-inclusive in addressing the extant inefficiencies in the rice production systems of Ghana.

Over the past three decades, the cereal subsector in Ghana has contributed immensely to food security in the country. However, limited evidence exists on the production performance of this subsector, particularly in terms of heterogeneities across agro-ecological zones. This paper analyzes the production technology and performance of the cereal subsector in Ghana using a nationally representative data set from 26,449 cereal farms and the meta-stochastic frontier approach. The empirical results suggest that the estimated factor inputs contribute substantially to cereal output, with land and seed exerting the highest impacts across all agro-ecological zones. The evidence further shows that the agro-ecology of cereal farms plays a crucial role in the performance of the subsector. The mean technical efficiency estimates strongly suggest that cereal farms in all agro-ecologies exhibit some degrees of production inefficiency. The findings further reveal total output from the meta-frontier to be much superior to those generated by cereal farms in all agro-ecologies of Ghana, indicating the existence of opportunities for cereal output gains in all agro-ecologies. We find heterogeneities in farm management practices and production technology across the various crops and agro-ecological zones to be relevant sources for cereal productivity growth in Ghana.

As sustainable intensification is a major pathway for improving agricultural productivity and reducing the environmental impacts of land use, the Government of Ethiopia and international development organizations have been promoting several practices and technologies for sustainable intensification. Using panel data from 368 farming households in Ethiopia from 2014, 2016, and 2019, this study gauges the poverty and food security impacts of Integrated Soil Fertility Management technologies and their combined use with conservation agriculture practices, specifically minimum tillage and crop rotation. We find significant positive effects of ISFM adoption in terms of increasing dietary diversity and food expenditure and reducing food insecurity. In terms of poverty, ISFM adoption decreases the probability of being poor, the poverty gap, and the severity of poverty. When combined with CA practices, we find that the effects are consistently larger for farmers who integrate ISFM and CA for all food security and poverty measures. Our findings strongly suggest that the adoption of ISFM technologies has significant positive implications for poverty reduction and improved food security. These benefits are likely to gain a considerable boost if ISFM technologies are applied together with CA practices.

Purpose: Research efforts aiming to improve understanding of how various organisational relationships contribute to better food quality (FQ) in a constantly changing business environment are limited. This study examines the effects of supply chain (SC) organisations on the quality of food products across multi-tiered segments with dynamic business situations.Design/methodology/approach: Guided by a conceptual research framework based on contingency theory and netchain analysis, moderation-based partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyse multi-tiered data from 405 shrimpers and 238 women processors in Akwa-Ibom, Lagos and Ondo states in Nigeria.Findings: The authors' findings show that unpredictable business environments such as market turbulence (MT), power asymmetry (PA) and distrust (DT) not only directly influence SC organisations but also moderate how organisational networks contribute to improved FQ. Further results reveal that closer vertical ties such as relational contracts are prerequisites for small-scale actors to guarantee improved FQ along multiple nodes of the food system.Originality/value: This is the first study to examine, from a contingency and multi-tiered perspective, how small-scale actors can maintain FQ across interdependent nodes of a food chain in a developing country context and to explore the complex interplay between SC networks and the quality of highly perishable food products in unpredictable business environments. Relevant theoretical and policy implications are discussed.

This study sets out to investigate the prospects for raising oil palm output in sub‐Saharan Africa, particularly Ghana, without further expansion of cropland. Given global concerns about oil palm's role in deforestation and land use change, the focus is on enhancing productivity on existing farmlands. Utilizing a unique, nationally representative dataset of 2046 farm households spanning 1987−2017, we evaluate the current state of oil palm production technologies and the efficiency of their use by farm families in Ghana. The study employs the stochastic metafrontier framework to account for regional differences in production technology and managerial capacity and gauge the performance of these productivity indicators across Ghana over these three decades. Our findings indicate that, on average, smallholder producers use only 44% of their accessible stock of oil palm technology, operating at an average managerial capacity of 69%, with a very low metafrontier technical efficiency score of 28% over the period. These findings suggest that had oil palm technology and managerial performance kept pace with time over these three decades, technical efficiency relative to the metafrontier would have expanded by 72%, leading to an average land savings of 37% for other uses. Consequently, greater potential for oil palm output growth lies in technological advancement than in farmers' ability to efficiently use these technologies.