Perceptions and Aspirations: A Case Study of Young People in Ghana's Cocoa Sector

Anyidoho, Nana Akua; Leavy, Jennifer; Asenso-Okyere, Kwadwo

doi:10.1111/j.1759-5436.2012.00376.x

Cited by 54 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…Migration from rural areas was a controversial issue: about one-third clearly wished to migrate to an urban area. Therefore, the desire of about half of the total interviewees to stay in their villages challenges the prevailing narrative whereby it is assumed that youth are eager to migrate from rural areas as agriculture is not appealing [20][21][22]. Some respondents felt they could not leave their parents, which was particularly true for young women.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Realities, Perceptions, Challenges and Aspirations of Rural Youth in Dryland Agriculture in the Midelt Province, Morocco

Giuliani

Mengel

Paisley³

et al. 2017

Sustainability

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Active involvement of youth in agriculture is necessary for sustainable agricultural systems but is currently a challenge in many areas. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative participatory research methods, this study analyses rural youth's realities, perspectives and aspirations in dryland Agricultural Livelihood Systems (ALSs) in the Midelt Province, Morocco, with a particular focus on gender. The data collected are an important first step in understanding the target group and working with youth to identify and develop appropriate programmatic interventions to improve their livelihoods and rural futures. Prior to expressing their aspirations for their rural life and career, the youth first raised the issue of unfulfilled primary needs: access to education, potable water, heath care, and lack of infrastructure in their villages. The issue of outmigration from rural areas is controversial and not so widespread. The youth's dream village is envisioned as a rural place where people have a more comfortable life with their own families, farming better and more sustainably rather than seeking a job in urban areas. To support the youth's aspirations and their willingness to stay in agriculture, there is a need for infrastructural and regulatory interventions and specific training in agricultural practices targeting and engaging youth.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Realities, Perceptions, Challenges and Aspirations of Rural Youth in Dryland Agriculture in the Midelt Province, Morocco

Giuliani

Mengel

Paisley³

et al. 2017

Sustainability

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“…In particular, to what extent they would be willing to farm if some of the constraints to start farming were removed, and what kind of farm they would like to have. For instance, Anyidoho et al (2012), who interviewed young people in Ghana, mentioned the changes they deemed necessary for them to consider a possible future as farmers, for example, access to credit and getting good prices for their products. Asking young people to state their preferences if they had more opportunities does not always overlap an approach based on studying young people's aspirations (in the sense of hopes and dreams).…”

Section: Approaches To Analyse Young People's Willingness To Farmmentioning

confidence: 99%

Young people’s willingness to farm under present and improved conditions in Thailand

Salvago

Phiboon²,

Faysse

et al. 2019

Outlook Agric

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Studies of young people's willingness to farm usually analyse their plans based on the resources available to them, or their hopes if they had access to more resources, but rarely study the two jointly. However, in newly industrialized countries in Asia, such joint assessments are needed to disentangle the extent to which young people's limited involvement in farming is due to lack of interest or to the fact that they see no way to get round the obstacles to starting the kind of farming they want to practice. This study analysed the vision of 86 young rural people in Prachinburi Province, Thailand, concerning farming, their plan to farm under prevailing conditions and their willingness to become a farmer if more opportunities to start farming were available. More than two-thirds of the interviewees were not farming at the time of the interview, but half planned to start farming, either part or full time, in the coming decade. One-third of the interviewees said that if they had better opportunities to start farming, they would reconsider their current plans to work in non-agricultural sectors and instead become full-time farmers. Public policies aimed at increasing the number of young people who become farmers should consequently not take the prevailing lack of engagement in farming by many young rural people as a given. Such policies should not only support young people who already plan to farm, but also those who would be willing to farm if they had better opportunities to do so.

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“…School attendance and asset acquisition were found to be the most strongly correlated with cocoa incomes, suggesting that if farmers were to adopt optimal management practices, we might expect to see these poverty indicators exhibit the most improvement. The ability for farmers to be able to afford more advanced education for their children (Nukunya, 2003), who then often aspire to non-farm related livelihoods (Anyidoho et al, 2012), is an important driver of social mobility in Ghana. In addition, the ability to afford adequate farm labor would lessen the expectation of school-age children to help on the farm and, therefore, would likely result in higher school attendance.…”

Section: Alleviating Povertymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Ecological Limits of Poverty Alleviation in an African Forest-Agriculture Landscape

Morel

Hirons

Sasu

et al. 2019

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

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Cocoa yields in Ghana remain low. This has variously been attributed to low rates of fertilizer application, pollinator limitation, and particularly dry growing conditions. In this paper we use an African forest-agriculture landscape dominated by cocoa (Theobroma cacao) to develop an ecological production function, allowing us to identify key ecological and management limits acting on cocoa yields simultaneously. These included more consistent application of fertilizers inter-annually, distributing rotting biomass throughout the farm and reducing the incidence of capsid attacks. By relaxing these limits, we estimate plausible increases in yields and, by extension, farm incomes. Our analysis reveals that resulting increases in cocoa yields requiring both ecological and intensive management interventions could be significant (113 ± 60%); however, benefits are disproportionately realized by the wealthiest households. We found that wealthier households benefited proportionally more from ecological intensification methods (e.g., leaving more rotting biomass in their farms) and the poorest households benefited proportionally more from capital-intensive intensification methods (e.g., pesticide and fertilizer applications). We treated poverty as multi-dimensional, and show that only certain dimensions of poverty (school attendance, assets, and food security) are significantly related to cocoa incomes, while several other dimensions (access to clean water, sanitation and electricity, and infant mortality) are not. We explore how increased household cocoa incomes could impact different dimensions of poverty. Our findings suggest, that if all households adopted the optimal level of each of these management options, and in so doing had similar poverty profiles to those households already managing optimally, we would see the community-averaged probability: a child of a household misses school decrease from 47 to 31%, a household would be able to acquire assets increase from 40 to 59% and a household would have access to an adequate amount of food increase from 62 to 79%.

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Perceptions and Aspirations: A Case Study of Young People in Ghana's Cocoa Sector

Cited by 54 publications

References 6 publications

Realities, Perceptions, Challenges and Aspirations of Rural Youth in Dryland Agriculture in the Midelt Province, Morocco

Realities, Perceptions, Challenges and Aspirations of Rural Youth in Dryland Agriculture in the Midelt Province, Morocco

Young people’s willingness to farm under present and improved conditions in Thailand

The Ecological Limits of Poverty Alleviation in an African Forest-Agriculture Landscape

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