Effects of Awareness of Fertilizer Subsidy on the Yield of Crops among Rural Farmers in Ghana

Abstract

The study examines the effects of awareness of fertilizer subsidy on the yield of crops among rural farmers in Ghana. Random sampling was used to select six communities and 10 households per community. They include Bawku, Navrongo, Tolon kumbungu and Walewale from the Northern part and Ejura and Atebubu in the Southern part of Ghana. Primary data were collected from the sampled household by administering questionnaire. Descriptive statistics was used in analyzing the data and independent-samples t-test was used to compare the crop yield of farmers that are aware of the fertilizer subsidy program and unaware of the fertilizer subsidy program and mean was used to find the output of the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries by using SPSS. Out of the 60 farmers interviewed in the study, male households head constituted majority 88.3%.Thepercentages of beneficiaries of the fertilizer subsidy program were 66.7% and that of the non-beneficiaries were 33.3%.Maize recorded the highest average output per acre 10.12kg/acre of beneficiaries of fertilizer subsidy program and the highest average output per acre 11.3kg/acre for the non-beneficiaries of the fertilizer subsidy program. Rice recorded the highest average output per acre 40.10kg/acre of beneficiaries before the fertilizer subsidy program and also recorded the highest average output per acre of beneficiaries after the fertilizer subsidy program. The results of the independent-samples T-test shows that, the group means 16.21 and 12.50 are significantly different because the value in the sig (2 tailed) row 0.01 and 0.03 are less than 0.05. This implies that, those farmers who were aware of the fertilizer subsidy program had higher crop yield than those who were unaware of the fertilizer subsidy program.