EFFECT OF A FOOD CROP DEVELOPMENT PROJECT ON LIVELIHOOD OF SMALL SCALE MAIZE FARMERS GHANA

Abstract

The Food Crop Development Project (FCDP) was introduced with the aim of improving farm incomes, household food security, nutrition and reducing poverty among small-scale farmers. This study sought to find answers to the questions of whether the project improved farmers’ access to credit, improved maize output or whether small-scale maize farmers adopted the improved maize production practices and how it impacted on maize production. Descriptive survey was conducted and using multi-stage random sampling procedure a final sample of 130 farmers was selected. The results indicated that participation in FCDP had a positive and significant but moderate relationship with maize output. More participants reported having easy access to credit than non- participants with chi-square value of 17.29 being highly significant indicating the possible relationship between ease of access to credit and participation in FCDP. The OLS stepwise regression analysis showed that participation, farm size and ease of access to credit were the main predictors of maize output while participation, income and household size were also the main predictors of food security. Thus, FCDP helped to improve the livelihoods of maize farmers in the study area. The policy implication of these findings is that subsidized agricultural input projects like the FCDP, have the potential to improve food security and farm incomes of peasant households.