The effect of carbon farming training on food security and development resilience in Northern Ghana

ABSTRACT

Carbon farming has recently been advocated for as climate change and variability mitigation and/or adaptation strategy in global agriculture. In this study, we address an important research question of whether carbon farming training can improve household resilience capacity as well as food security by employing internationally standardized indicators. Household resilience capacity and its components are measured using the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)’s resilience capacity index while the food security measures used include household and child food insecurity experience scale (FIES and CFIES), food consumption score (FCS) and household dietary diversity score (HDDS). We relied on doubly robust treatment effect estimators to account for potential selection bias and heterogeneity. We find that carbon farming training has no statistically significant effect on overall household resilience capacity. However, we find a large and statistically significant effect on key components of resilience (specifically, access to basic services, assets and social safety nets) and a marginal improvement in adaptive capacity. We also find statistically significant effect on FCS and HDDS but not for the other food security indicators (FIES and CFIES). Overall, the results suggest that agricultural training programs, particularly climate change adaptation capacity building initiatives, could improve important welfare measures in developing countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Carbon farming
• biochar
• compost
• capacity building
• training
• food security
• development resilience
• Ghana

JEL Classification:

• C21
• I31
• Q12
• Q15
• Q16
• Q18
• Q57

Acknowledgements

We thank Joachim von Braun, Daniel Bruce Sarpong, Irene Susana Egyir, Akwasi Mensah-Bonsu, Daniel Adu Ankrah and USAID-UG Project Secretariat for diverse research and administrative support during the publication process. We are grateful to Emmanuel Asiwome Drovou for research and administrative assistance during the data collection. We also thank the editor and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions which greatly improved the content of the paper.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

Data from the Climate Research for Alumni and Postdocs in Africa, 2021 (i.e. climapAfrica Postdoc Fellow) (Personal reference number: 91815173) programme with funding from Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst e.V. (DAAD), German Academic Exchange Service, Bonn, Germany is gratefully acknowledged. Charles Yaw Okyere undertook a 3-month (May–July 2022) short research stay at the Center for Development Research (ZEF), University of Bonn, Germany with funding from DAAD leading to this publication. Lukas Kornher acknowledges funding from the German Federal Ministry of Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) under Program of Accompanying Research for Agricultural Innovation (PARI) Project (Grant number: 2014-0689.1).

Notes on contributors

Charles Yaw Okyere

Charles Yaw Okyere holds a Doctor of Agricultural Sciences (Dr. Agr.) degree from the University of Bonn, Germany. His research interest areas include the application of behavioral, experimental and quasi-experimental economic techniques to health, education, agriculture, and welfare. He has skills in conducting socio-economic surveys and has been involved in the collection of data on various development issues, using both quantitative and qualitative techniques.

Richmond Atta-Ankomah

Richmond Atta-Ankomah is a development economist and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research, University of Ghana. He holds a PhD from the Open University, UK. His research interest is diverse but largely converges around development issues concerning households and firms in sub-Saharan Africa.

Collins Asante-Addo

Collins Asante-Addo is a Lecturer at the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness, University of Ghana. His main research interests broadly cover the areas of food environment policy analysis, evaluation of agricultural technologies adoption, consumer behavior and demand analysis, and agricultural finance.

Lukas Kornher

Lukas Kornher is a Senior Researcher at the University of Bonn’s Center for Development Research (ZEF). He obtained his PhD from the University of Bonn in 2015 and previously worked at the University of Kiel as a Post-Doctoral Researcher. He has extensive work experience in the area of food price volatility, trade, and food and nutrition security. Currently, Lukas Kornher focusses on quantitative research on how market access and trade liberalization affect SDG outcomes, specifically food and nutrition security (SDG2).