Challenges of income diversification and food security in Northern rural Ghana

Abstract

AbstractThe relationship between income diversification and food security gained considerable attention in the academic literature in the last two decades. Smallholder farmers undertake income diversification activities to ensure improved food security amidst changing patterns of climate and rural socio-demographics. Understanding challenges of smallholder farmers in income diversification strategies is critical to assess the effectiveness of food security measures in savannah regions threatened by weather variability and environmental shocks. The aim of this study is to shed light on the challenges of income diversification in Northern rural Ghana and to add to the growing body of research seeking to understand the challenges of income diversification and its link to food security status of smallholder farmers in the deprived context of rural Africa. By exploiting a unique sample of 500 agricultural households in rural Ghana, we show that income diversification and food security status of smallholders is positively related for both food access and nutritional diversity. Our results show that income diversification played a significant role in improving food access and dietary consumption. Highly diversified households were more likely to report being food secure as higher income diversification translated into higher incomes and food security. The single most important factor which stood out as an explanatory variable for food security in Northern rural Ghana was spousal incomes generated from diversification. Spousal incomes accounted for (29.2%) of the share of total household incomes used to purchase food for farm families in distress seasons. The findings support the use of spousal income diversification pathways as a means of reducing the negative impacts of food insecurity in the Yendi and Bimbilla Municipalities of Northern Region. The study highlights the need for Ghana’s economic policy frameworks to address the following three cardinal challenges of income diversification : (1) poor access to start-up capital or funds, (2) poor condition of infrastructure, and (3) high costs of transportation, directly linked to the under development of Northern Ghana.

Keywords

• income diversification
• sustainable livelihoods
• climate change
• household food security
• smallholder farmers
• rural development policy