Farmers’ willingness to accept for attributes of soil and water Conservation technologies in Northern Ghana

Abstract

The issues of soil and land degradation have attracted considerable attention and concern in Ghana and, in particular, the rural areas where livelihoods of the majority of the households heavily rely on farming and land resources. Motivated by environmental and public good nature of interventions designed for soil and land degradation, knowing the optimum rate of resources for conservation practices and technologies is of great importance in the face of limited public funds as is the case of Ghana and all other developing countries. The current study estimates farmers’ willingness to accept (WTA) for the attributes of soil and water conservation technologies (SWCT), specifically soil and stone bunds, using the Bayesian approach and the mixed logit model on data collected from 305 smallholder farm households in northern Ghana using the Choice Experiment (CE) Method. Farmers’ most valued attribute in terms of WTA was the environment quality attribute. Also important to farmers were the potential yield improvements they expected from the technologies. WTA/ hectare for “potential yield increase”, “improved landscape quality” and “collective action” are GH¢98.52 or US$16.63, GH¢696.0 or US$117.11, and GH¢-650.34 or US$-109.78 respectively. Production factor requirements of the technologies were not significant attributes to farmers in Northern Ghana. The importance of institutions on preference formation is supported by the significance of the WTA of collective action. With limited public funds, including collective action in PES programmes may offer a low-cost way of supplying environmental services. For soil and water conservation programmes to be more effective, technologies with features for which farmers have high preference, reflected by those with higher marginal willingness-to-accept, such as high crop yield and high environmental service supply should be promoted.

Keywords: Soil and water conservation technology, choice experiment, Bayesian econometrics, mixed logit model, willingness to accept, Ghana.

DOI: 10.7176/JNSR/15-3-01

Publication date: September 30^th 2024