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Production credit is essential in enhancing the technical efficiency and welfare of smallholder farmers in Africa. This paper evaluated the impact of credit on smallholders' technical efficiency using cross-sectional data from 233 maize-producing households in northern Ghana. Due to the exogenous assignment of credit and assumption of homogeneity in farm technologies, the propensity score matching analysis was used to compare the average difference in technical efficiency between farmers with credit and those without credit. The results show that credit impacted positively on farmers' technical efficiency. Provision of credit enhanced timely purchase and efficient allocation of factor inputs to produce the maximum output. Income and age also played an important role in reducing smallholders' technical inefficiency. The major recommendation of this study is that, the credit programme of agricultural interventions should target several resource poor farmers in order to enhance efficiency gains.Financial institutions must collaborate with agricultural and farmer development projects to facilitate credit delivery to smallholder farmers.

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The study seeks to examine the Food Security Status of Farming Households in the Forest Belt of the Central Region of Ghana. A multistage sampling technique was used to select the respondents that were interviewed. In all 134 farming households were interviewed but 120 were selected for analysis after removing the questionnaires which were not properly administered. The households were selected from eight communities in two districts. Food consumption data of 851 individuals in 120 households were used for the analysis. The study reveals that the majority of the farming households (60%) were found to be food insecure. Further, the Binary Logit Model results reveal that an increase in household's income, having access to credit as well as increase in the quantity of own farm production improve the food security status of farming households in the Forest Belt of the Central Region of Ghana. However, holding all other factors constant, increases in non-working member of households worsens the food security status of farming households. Most of the food insecurity coping strategies adopted by household's are not severe and can only be used to avert the impact of food insecurity on a temporal basis. These results have policy implications for Food Security Status of Farming Households in developing countries.