Joseph Clottey (Ph.D), a Post-Doctoral Fellow with the International Centre for Evaluation and Development (ICED) has co-authored an article entitled “Taking stock of gender gaps in crop production technology adoption and technical efficiency in Ghana”.
The article has since been published in the Agrekon, which is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal concentrating on Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics vis-a-vis to Southern Africa. It is edited by Professor Johann Kirsten, an economics Professor at Stellenbosch University (South Africa) and a director at the Bureau of Economic Research. Agrekon is the official publication of the Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa (AEASA), the professional body of South African Agricultural economists.
We present the key points of the article:
- Agricultural performance has been proven to have strong linkages with the growth of developing countries. However, the gains from agricultural growth disproportionately trickle down to the poor.
- Amongst the many ways of reducing this bias against the poor is to reduce gender gaps in agriculture. Over time, however, the validity of stats on gender gaps has been questioned, and the way stakeholders describe gender gaps also affects how they perceive & address them.
- This study sought to assess the gender gap in farm output due to technology gaps and technical efficiency. It further evaluates whether gender patterns in technology adoption and technical efficiency have changed over time.
- We apply meta-stochastic frontier analysis to data pooled from 7 cross-sectional population-based surveys that represent about three decades (1987-2017) of the prod history for 12 crops in Ghana to assess dynamics of gender gaps in farm output due to tech gaps & tech efficiency.
- Results indicate that the responsiveness of output to land, planting material, hired labor, and fertilizer for females is lower than that of males. On the contrary, the responsiveness of output to family labor and pesticide for males is lower than that of females.
- Over time the gender gap in elasticities for land and planting material has nearly closed; the gap against males for fertilizer has shifted to a gap against females; and for family/hired labor the gap against females has shifted to a gap against males.
- The results also indicate that females operate at an increasing return to scale of 1.14 while males operate at a decreasing return of 0.93. This suggests that females have more room to increase their scale of production.
- The dynamics in the level & gender gap in elasticities results in a technology gap of about 25% for female farmers whilst their male counterparts faced a technology gap of 20%, and this gap is robust across different crops and in most regions.
- Over the past three decades, the gap against females declined from 18% in 1997/98 by about 83% to 3% in 2016/17.
- The results indicate female farmers are more technically efficient (TE of 76%) compared to their male counterparts (TE of 73%). However, this is not robust across different crops but is persistent in all regions except the Northern region.
- Tech efficiency gap against males has remained relatively steady over 3 decades and is estimated at 5% in 2016/2017. Meta-frontier technical efficiency measure indicates that both male/female operate at 60% of the potential possible given the overall crop prod tech in Ghana.
- We highlight that both male and female farmers have room to increase their tech adoption & tech efficiency in crop prod & the 30-year temporal dynamics suggest that females could also lead in the crop prod tech in Ghana, & they should be supported, albeit not at the expense of males.
- For gender interventions to yield their expected results, they must be targeted at specific crops and specific.
This link provides the full article:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03031853.2022.2150664
Congratulations from the ICED Team to Dr. Joseph Clottey on this remarkable achievement!
