Search results

Despite the importance of plantains in food security, nutrition and socioeconomic development, their production over the years has not matched up with demand, simply because of their highly perishable nature and high post-harvest losses. Current attempts at increasing production levels have targeted converting plantains into forms that may help to increase their shelf life. One of such forms is a ripped plantain powder mix for ease of preparing ripped plantain fritters (kaklo). As part of product development and introduction, this study aimed at examining consumer preferences for the ripped plantain powder mix for kaklo using advanced discrete choice modelling techniques.

We employed random utility maximization and random regret minimization methods in both utility space and willingness to pay (WTP) space to analyse choice data on 198 sampled consumers in Cape Coast, Ghana.

Our econometric modelling revealed that consumers attached high value to the proposed ripped plantain powder mix for preparing kaklo. They prefer a formulation that would have the traditional reddish-brown colour, sweet and spicy, certified but also affordable.

This implies that to improve marketability of the product, it should be cheap, Food and Drugs Authority certified and must have a sweet and spicy taste.

This paper is one of the first to apply the random utility maximization and random regret minimization models in the utility space and WTP space to examine consumer preferences for ripped plantain powder mix for plantain fritters preparation.

The consequences of extreme climatic events that threaten food security have created the urgent need to properly adopt climate-smart adaptation techniques to improve productivity. The study examined the sustainability responses to climate-smart adaptation and the implication it has for explaining the food security situations among farm households in the Central Region of Ghana.

We estimated Heckit treatment effect model to analyse cross-sectional data collected from randomly selected farmers in the Central Region.

Analysis of farm sustainability index suggests that farmers' agricultural practices in response to climate change are lowly or moderately sustainable. We further found that while majority of the farm households are severely food insecure or food insecure with hunger, only about one-third are food insecure without hunger and the remaining few being food secure. The sustainability of farm practices is being impacted by the farmers’ choice of climate smart adaptation measures at the farm level. Consequently, the farm households' food security situation is found to be improved when sustainable farming practices are employed in the face of managing climate change effects.

Conclusions drawn from the study findings give rooms for policy implications that suggest responsibilities for policymakers, farmers and other stakeholders to promote CSA practices in food crop production in Ghana. These policy implications will contribute to improve crop productivity, increase incomes and thus enhance food security among farm families. Awareness campaign about benefits of CSA practices and technologies need to be strengthened among farmers in Ghana by government and NGOs that matter in promoting farm resilience to climate change. Given the important impacts of sustainable farm practices on household food security situation, policies that seek to build the adaptive capacity of farmers to climate vulnerability impacts should take into consideration the sustainability dimensions of the adaptation and mitigation measures to be advocated for use at farm levels.

Our paper contributes to literature knowledge on climate-smart adaptation practices effect on food security as evidenced in some recent literature. The paper makes a unique contribution by highlighting the food security implication of the sustainability impact of CSA practices, thereby exploring sustainability as an impact pathway between climate smart adaptations practices and food security in a developing country like Ghana. We approached our study aiming at making new contribution by introducing in the study implementation a quasi-experimental research design which future studies on impacts of climate smart adaptation practices can replicate.