Ghana has a long history of intervening in food markets to balance consumers’ expectations of low and stable food prices, farmers’ demands for high farmgate prices, and traders’ demand for predictability in seasonal price patterns. However, government interventions may also alter the behavior of markets and alter incentives or risks for all market actors. The Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) initiative, launched in 2017, signaled a renewed commitment from government to agriculture and is Ghana’s flagship strategy for boosting smallholder production, strengthening market linkages, and developing value chains. Given this significant policy shift, we examine agricultural commodity price patterns before and after 2017 to identify potential structural shifts in price behavior in maize, tomato, and onion markets, three key sectors targeted by PFJ. Results show maize and tomato prices drop below their long-term trend under PFJ, but not onion prices. Tomato and onion prices exhibit smaller seasonal price variations. These results are indicative of a structural shift in food markets, although further analysis is required to conclusively attribute these changes to PFJ.

Growth in Ghana during the last decade has not translated into meaningful benefits for rural households who experienced an increase in poverty in recent years. This reflects, among other factors, the relatively weak performance of the agricultural sector and its general lack of competitiveness. The government has identified agriculture as the backbone of its development strategy and is committed to address the numerous challenges faced by the sector. However, it is likely to encounter fiscal constraints in a postdevelopment assistance era. It is therefore crucial to understand the trade-offs associated with alternative spending strategies. In this study we develop an economywide modeling framework for analyzing returns to public spending in support of agriculture. The model is used to evaluate the effect of compositional shifts in spending given marginal returns to different areas of investment. Our analysis focuses especially on extension services and input subsidies as two important components of the government’s agricultural development strategy. The objective of the study is to advise policymakers on which spending strategy is the most likely to contribute to government’s development goals, such as poverty reduction or economic growth. We find that a doubling of the share of agriculture in total public budget would accelerate agricultural growth to somewhere between 7.6% and 8.6% against the business-as-usual scenario of about 3.5%. The level of growth achieved depends on the types of policies that are favored. In the examples presented here, we show that an input subsidy-oriented spending strategy may yield significant benefits in the short run (1–5 years), and especially in an expansionary fiscal environment, but investments in effective extensive services are more sustainable and rewarding in the medium- to longer-run (6–10 years), especially when public resources are more constrained. These results demonstrate why short-term political goals might result in policy choices that are suboptimal from a longer-term development perspective.

This book takes forward our understanding of agricultural input subsidies in low income countries.

The Agricultural Outlook 2021-2030 is a collaborative effort of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations. It brings together the commodity, policy and country expertise of both organisations as well as input from collaborating member countries to provide an annual assessment of the prospects for the coming decade of national, regional and global agricultural commodity markets. The publication consists of 11 Chapters; Chapter 1 covers agricultural and food markets; Chapter 2 provides regional outlooks and the remaining chapters are dedicated to individual commodities.

Citing a paucity of empirical evidence on the poverty and distributional impacts of trade policy reform in Ghana as the main motivation for this volume, the editors (both of the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research at the U. of Ghana) present eleven papers that combine theory and econometric analysis in an effort to assess linkages between globalization, trade, and poverty (including gendered aspects). Specific topics examined include manufacturing employment and wage effects of trade liberalization; the influence of education on trade liberalization impacts on household welfare; trade liberalization and manufacturing firm productivity; the impact of elimination of trade taxes on poverty and income distribution; food prices, tax reforms, and consumer welfare under trade liberalization; impacts on tariff revenues; and impacts on cash cropping, gender, and household welfare; Distributed in the US by Stylus. Annotation ©2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

Small farmers and traders often lack the market information they need to earn the most from their crop sales. This paper analyzes the effects of an action research experiment in central Malawi, in which four groups of smallholder farmers were provided with maize and soybean price information from a local commodity exchange during the 2019 marketing season, while four other groups of smallholder farmers did not receive this information. Using data from a panel survey of 399 farmers and 78 traders conducted before and after the main marketing season and using kernel propensity score matching approach to account for possible differences between the treated and non-treated farmers, we estimate the effects of the intervention on a number of outcome indicators. A before versus after analysis was also employed to evaluate changes in traders’ marketing outcomes. We find positive but statistically insignificant effects on maize and soybean selling prices, sales through structured markets and levels of commercialization after the intervention. We also find a negative and statistically significant effect on the quantity of maize sold by farmers, suggesting paradoxically that providing farmers with price information reduced their sales volumes. The proportion of traders aware of structured markets and their share of sales through structured markets also increased significantly after the intervention. The quantity of maize sold by traders as well as the selling prices for maize and soy-bean also increased significantly, although this may be due to factors other than the intervention. The study concludes that provision of price information alone is not enough to facilitate small farmers’ and traders’ use of structured markets. Greater effort is needed to sensitize farmers and traders on the quality and quantity requirements as well as the operations of structured markets.

The good practice guidelines - which form the basis of an interactive policymaker's tool kit included on a CD accompanying the book - relate not only to the more focused problem of encouraging increased fertilizer use by farmers, but also to the broader challenge of creating the type of enabling environment that is needed to support the emergence of efficient, dynamic and commercially viable fertilizer marketing systems."--Jacket.