Category: Adaptation strategies

Rainwater harvesting (RWH) allows storing irrigation water for critical times in the growing period of otherwise rain-fed crops. It is also a promising practice for reducing costs for irrigation uptake as its installation is considerably cheaper than building groundwater irrigation infrastructure.

In Ghana, limited evidence on the use and potential of RWH for small-scale irrigation systems exists. Even though Ghana has abundant water resources for irrigation, its uptake is very low. RWH can provide a cost-efficient alternative to irrigation installment and is notably a strategy with usage potential at different scales. It is particularly well suited to be coupled with farm-level horticulture production, either for additional income from vegetable sales or satisfying changing demands in household consumption (for Sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, see e.g. OECD & FAO, 2016). This could also yield nutritional and thus health benefits, with vegetables enriching otherwise staple-based diets in Ghana. A combination with conservation agriculture techniques can be particularly useful, with further improvements in soil water storage capacity enhancing the water use efficiency of RWH.

In addition, RWH has the potential to deliver gender co-benefits. Since it is usually women who are in charge of fetching water and who engage in backyard vegetable farming, collecting rainwater could save women time, making time for other activities and enabling additional farming activities.

Rainwater harvesting and small-scale irrigation are a good alternative for action at smallholder level, with simple installation techniques proving less difficult to implement, maintain and refinance as compared to large-scale irrigation systems.

Thus, RWH is a promising adaptation strategy meeting local interest in Ghana. It can be implemented by farmers autonomously and decrease dependency on precipitation.

References

• OECD/FAO, (2016). Agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa: Prospects and challenges for the next decade, in OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2016-2025, OECD Publishing, Paris. https://dx.doi.org/10.1787/agr_outlook-2016-5-en.

In areas short of precipitation, irrigation can be a key strategy to enable plant growth and increase yields. Water can be drawn from different sources, such as groundwater, surface water and in some countries even desalinated seawater, to enable a better growth of plants. Irrigation schemes at smaller scale can be initiated and implemented by farmers themselves, but for larger irrigation installations, technical agencies and extension officers play an important role.

As of yet, irrigation is not widely spread in Ghana, with only an estimated 1.6% of the area with a respective potential actually being irrigated (Mendes, Paglietti & Jackson, 2014), mostly for rice and horticulture cultivation (Namara et al., 2011). This limited uptake implies that further installation of irrigation schemes is possible and could increase Ghana’s agricultural production. However, this may incur high costs and technically challenging installation and maintenance. As a climate change adaptation strategy, the case for irrigation depends on the climate scenario, with the North of Ghana projected to see less rainfall under future climate change. However, as a measure to intensify agricultural production and enable multiple harvests, irrigation can also be considered useful today, where water is available for agricultural use.

Figure 2 shows the net value of maize production in the whole of Ghana under different irrigation scenarios, reflecting the varying costs that different irrigation techniques and installations incur. As can be seen from the comparison with the baseline scenario and the scenario under climate change, not all irrigation scenarios are able to offset the losses projected under climate change.

In sum, while irrigation has the potential to increase agricultural production in Ghana, it is also a costly strategy, often requiring institutional support for implementation and maintenance.

References

• Mendes, D.M, Paglietti, L. & Jackson, D., (2014). Ghana: Irrigation market brief. Food and Agri-culture Organization of the United Nations. Rome.
• Namara, R., Horowitz, L., Nyamadi, B. & Barry, B., (2011). Irrigation Development in Ghana: Past experiences, emerging opportunities, and future directions, International Food Policy Research Institute, GSSP Working Paper No. 27, Ghana Strategy Support Program, Accra.

Effective post-harvest management is crucial to avoid food loss along the value chain. Investments in scaling technologies for improved post-harvest management have high potential for reducing crop losses, also and especially under climate change. With climate change altering growing and harvesting seasons, post-harvest management is important to cope with increased uncertainty. It is a risk-reducing strategy that lowers the vulnerability of crop production to climate impacts. Next to main staple crops such as maize and beans, post-harvest loss (PHL) of easily perishable horticulture crops could be avoided. Numerous effective and low-cost technologies exist that can prevent or reduce PHL.

Ghana’s NDC Implementation and Investment plan lists post-harvest management as a priority for adapting agriculture to climate change, with interviews confirming wide-spread interest in such strategies. A concrete post-harvest technology with promising results in the context of maize production in Ghana have been so-called PICS bags (Purdue Improved Cowpea Storage): simple and affordable yet effective hermetic storage bags originally developed for storing cowpea. Implementation of improved post-harvest management strategies can be recommended across the country as a low-hanging fruit, since better post-harvest management can increase agricultural production considerably.

Furthermore, as the economic analysis confirmed, most post-harvest management measures are rather low cost interventions, with most intervention types being “no regret” strategies because even in the absence of climate change, the improvement in crop handling will lead to lower crop losses and higher agricultural output, being economically sensible. Figure 1 shows the net value of maize production under different post-harvest management scenarios, compared to scenarios of maize production without adaptation – both with (CC) and without climate change (BAS). Except for the highest cost scenario (MAX), all other PHM scenarios do not only make up for the maize losses under climate change, but are also able to surpass maize production under the baseline scenario (without climate change and without adaptation). This shows their high economic viability.

Overall, post-harvest management strategies have considerable potential in Ghana and, being an often low-cost and no-regret strategy, can be recommended for wider implementation.

While most adaptation strategies seek to minimize risks stemming from climate change, not all risks can be eliminated. Weather perils such as droughts, storms or erratic precipitation represent so-called systemic risks that go beyond the farmers’ coping ability. Thus, mechanisms are needed that distribute residual risks to avoid that certain groups or individuals lose their livelihoods. One such risk transfer solution is crop insurance, which allows farmers to insure their crop yields against weather-induced losses. While insurance usually is based on indemnity assessment, this model is problematic for smallholder farmers due to the high transaction costs which insurance schemes usually entail. Thus, a more suitable approach for smallholder farmers are weather index-based insurances (WII), a scheme that uses a weather index, such as precipitation, to determine a payout. Alternative index-based insurance schemes can also be useful, such as area-yield index insurance.

Generally, insurance schemes are rather costly adaptation strategies, at least when considering the overall costs and with progressing climate change increasing the overall risk to the agricultural sector. However, insurance schemes have an important role to play for securing livelihoods: They can stabilize farm incomes and can prove to be very cost-effective for farmers when a hazard occurs.

According to the Ghana Agricultural Insurance Pool (GAIP), area-yield index insurance (AYII) as an alternative to WII has shown the biggest potential for smallholder farmers in Ghana as of yet. GAIP is a pioneer in implementing AYII in Ghana, insuring since 2011 successfully some 3000 – 4000 smallholder farmers’ cereal crops^[1] on over 18,000 acres of land. In 2017, GAIP made payouts to nearly half its insured parties.

Although AYII is a promising development, farmers’ uptake of AYII in Ghana remains limited. Balmalssaka et al. (2016), who examined the willingness of farmers in northern Ghana to participate in insurance schemes, found access to credit as well as education and experience with insurance to be important factors determining farmers’ engagement with crop insurance (Balmalssaka et al., 2016).

This indicates the need for additional incentives or financial support for taking out insurance, underlined also by Aidoo et al. (2014) who determined farmers’ willingness to pay for crop insurance in one municipality in Ghana. He concluded there was a need for government subsidies to implement it in the country (Aidoo et al., 2014). While subsidies are one strategy, experts also suggested to bundle insurance with inputs, where possible, to increase uptake.

Overall, crop insurance is a promising strategy for transferring climate risk also in Ghana. There is high interest in Ghana and demand-based roll-out of insurance pilots can be recommended. However, careful design is crucial to ensure affordability and financial sustainability.

[1] The main insured crops are: maize, sorghum, millet and groundnut.

References

• Aidoo, R., James, O., Prosper, W., & Awunyo-Vitor, D., (2014). Prospects of crop insurance as a risk management tool among arable crop farmers in Ghana. Asian Economic and Financial Review, 4(3), 341–354.
• Balmalssaka, Y., Wumbei, B. L., Buckner, J., & Nartey, R. Y., (2016). Willingness to participate in the market for crop drought index insurance among farmers in Ghana. African Journal of Agricultural Research, Vol. 11(14), 1257–1265.