Socio-economic factors affecting agroforestry adoption by smallholder farmers in Ghana (original) (raw)

This paper examines the socio-economic factors that affect agroforestry adoption by smallholder farmers in Ghana. Primary data was collected from 80 randomly selected farmers from four farming communities in the Offinso district of Ghana. Socio-economic factors which tend to influence the decision to adopt agroforestry practices were identified. These included level of education, age, income, years of farming experience, household farm labour, farm size, land tenure arrangement, knowledge on agroforestry practices, access to extension services, farmers’ value of forest, proximity to a forest reserve area and farmers’ willingness to plant trees. Logit regression model was employed to determine how these factors influence farmers’ adoption decision. The regression results indicated that, gender, total household size, number of years of farming experience, proximity to a forest reserve area, access to extension information and willingness to plant trees on farms have positive influence on adoption of agroforestry practices. However, only total household labour measured as household size and willingness to plant trees on farms predicted the decision to adopt agroforestry practices at a statistically significant level (p=0.05). Land ownership type (land acquired through a farmer’s family lineage categorized as inheritance) had a significantly negative influence on the adoption decision. The study provides useful information for extension services regarding planning and adoption strategies of developed agro-based practices such as agroforestry systems to smallholder farmers in different farming communities.