The cultivation of legume crops in combination with targeted sets of agricultural technologies is expected to improve soil quality, reduce the impact of agriculture on the direct environment, and allow farmers to intensify their production and increase their incomes and food security. In this context, the N2Africa programme has disseminated ‘tailor-made’ input- and knowledge packages in Ghana. To shed light on post-project input usage and the association of input usage with farmers’ income, I explore input usage of specified agricultural technologies for groundnut and soybean farmers in 2017. In addition, I analyse to what extent usage behaviour is associated with financial- and supply-side constraints. I find that usage of high-cost inputs is low as compared to low-cost inputs and that farmers have adapted their behaviour to their socio-economic circumstances as well as to the overarching market structure. Furthermore, I find that usage of complete technology packages is often unprofitable under specific circumstances – although this is highly context-dependent. When farmers adapt technology packages, leaving out mineral fertilizer, inoculant or both, the profitability estimates are financially more beneficial in some cases. Adding inoculant always increases profit or decreases loss. In addition, I find evidence that several factors, such as distance to the nearest market town and farmers’ risk preference, correlated with usage behaviour of several of the technology components in 2017.
MSc and Bcs thesis, internship reports