URBANIZATION AND AGRICULTURAL LAND LOSS: IMPACT ON PERI-URBAN HOUSEHOLD’S FOOD SECURITY AND WELFARE IN NORTHERN GHANA

Abstract

Rapid urban expansion in Northern Ghana is increasingly converting peri-urban agricultural land into built-up infrastructure, raising concerns about the implications for farming households whose livelihoods and food security depend on access to farmland. In cities such as Tamale, Wa, and Bolgatanga, residential and commercial development has intensified pressure on croplands, potentially undermining staple crop production, food access, and household welfare. Despite these concerns, empirical evidence linking farmland loss to food security and welfare outcomes in Northern Ghana remains limited. This study investigates the extent of peri-urban farmland loss to urban built infrastructure and its impact on household staple crop production, food security, and welfare using a mixed-methods cross-sectional design. Data were collected from 389 peri-urban farming households through a multi-stage sampling procedure involving purposive selection of the three cities, purposive selection of two peri-urban communities from each city, proportionate sampling of households within communities, and simple random sampling of households. Households were categorized into those experiencing farmland loss and those retaining their farmland. The study combines GIS-based land-use analysis (1994–2024) to assess farmland transformation, Residualized Quantile Regression to estimate the distributional effects of farmland loss on maize yield, Extended Ordered Probit Regression to examine food security outcomes measured by Food Consumption Score (FCS) and Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS), and Principal Component Analysis with multivariate regression to analyze household perceptions of urbanization’s welfare effects. The results reveal substantial cropland decline alongside rapid urban expansion across the three cities. In Tamale, cropland declined by 50.8% between 1994 and 2004 while built-up areas expanded by 103.7%, with further cropland loss of 26.4% between 2004 and 2014. In Wa, cropland declined by 42.6% between 1994 and 2004, while built-up areas expanded by 55.1%, followed by a 339.5% expansion between 2004 and 2014. In Bolgatanga, cropland declined by 16.3%, 26.9%, and 18.6% across successive decades as urban infrastructure expanded. Residualized Quantile Regression results indicate that farmland loss negatively affects maize yield across all quantiles, with stronger effects among median and high yield farmers (50th and 75th quantiles). Food security analysis indicates significant vulnerability among households experiencing farmland loss. Only 16% of households fall within the acceptable food consumption category, while 9.2% and 25.3% fall within borderline and poor consumption categories respectively. Similarly, 67.6% of households are less likely to be food secure, with 32.7% and 34.9% falling within moderate and severe food insecurity categories based on the HFIAS. Perception analysis shows that while urbanization may improve access to services such as education, healthcare, and road infrastructure, households remain skeptical about its potential to generate formal employment and small-scale industrial development. The diagnostic statistics of the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) value of 0.841 indicated the suitability of the data for Principal Component Analysis (PCA). The PCA extracted three main components namely; economic opportunity and market integration, access to basic services and livelihood diversification and social capital, which jointly explained 63.9% of the total variance. Overall, the study provides new empirical evidence on how peri-urban farmland transformation affects agricultural productivity, food security, and household welfare in Northern Ghana, highlighting the trade-offs between urban expansion and rural livelihood sustainability. The findings underscore the need for land-use governance by the Land Use and Spatial Planning Authority (LUSPA), the Lands Commission, and Metropolitan and Municipal Assemblies to safeguard productive agricultural land through integrated spatial planning and enforcement of zoning regulations. In addition, the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) should promote livelihood diversification and climate-resilient urban and peri-urban agriculture programmes to support households affected by farmland loss and strengthen food security in rapidly expanding cities.