The off-farm income and organic food expenditure nexus: Empirical evidence from rural Ghana

Abstract

This study uses evidence gathered from survey responses from 572 rural households in Ghana to examine the link between organic expenditure and off-farm income. To solve the endogeneity problem related to off-farm income, we use the instrumental variable Tobit model. The findings showed that expenditure on organic food was strongly and favorably connected to off-farm income. According to the disaggregated findings, female off-farm income is significantly more positively correlated with organic food expenditure than male off-farm income. The results provide practical implications for facilitating organic food consumption and eliminating food and nutrition insecurity among rural dwellers.

Keywords:

• off-farm income
• organic food expenditure
• IV-Tobit
• rural Ghana

JEL Classification:

• B23
• B23
• C8

Acknowledgement

We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful review and critical comments. The authors also extend enormous gratitude to the rural dwellers who participated in the data collection. Hongyun Zheng acknowledges the financial support from the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2662022JGQD006).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Martinson Ankrah Twumasi

Martinson Ankrah Twumasi is a research fellow in the College of Economics at Sichuan Agriculture University, China. His major interests include Rural Finance, Agricultural Economics, Agricultural Development, Development Economics, Econometrics, Financial Economics, Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Regional Economics, Sustainable Agriculture and Regional Rural Development. He has good research publications in the world-leading journals databases that having indexing of the Web of Science.

Hongyun Zheng

Hongyun Zheng is an Associate Professor at the College ofEconomics and Management, Huazhong Agricultural University, China. His research areas include ICT adoption, farmer’s well-being, and rural development.

Isaac Owusu Asante

Isaac Owusu Asante is a post doctoral research fellow lecturer in the the School of Economics and Management, Southwest Jiatong University, Chengdu, China. His major interests include Strategic Management, Information System Management and E-Business. He has good research publications in the world-leading journals databases that having indexing of the Web of Science.

Evans Brako Ntiamoah

Evans Brako Ntiamoah is an consultant in Ghana and a researcher in the the School of Management at Sichuan Agriculture University, China. He has good research publications in the world-leading journals databases that having indexing of the Web of Science. He is currently working in several fields of economics including Energy Economics; Environmental Economics; Development Economics; Agricultural Economics; Regional Economics; Regional Rural Development and Rural Finance.

Gideon Amo-Ntim

Gideon Amo-Ntim is currently a M.A economics master student at the Department of Economics, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio 45701 United States of America. He holds a masters degree in resource and land management and has authored more than 10 research articles with two first authored publications. He has interest in resource management, environmental economics and agricultural economic management.