Farmer incentives for quality Ghanaian peanuts

Connecting male and female smallholder farmers to premium groundnut markets and aflatoxin-mitigating technologies through innovative aggregator contracts

Groundnut value chains in Ghana are long and fragmented, consisting of many smallholder producers and intermediate traders. In this market environment, the farmer may not receive incentives to grow high quality and safe food, and the produce available at the market is generally low quality and at risk of aflatoxin contamination.

Consequently, demand for aflatoxin safe groundnuts in Ghana is mostly fulfilled by imports even though Ghana is the tenth largest groundnut producing country in the world.  Aggregators typically provide services or inputs to groups of smallholder farmers at the beginning of a season and purchase their groundnuts after harvest.

This project aims to strengthen value chain linkages by helping aggregators provide yield-enhancing and aflatoxin-reducing inputs to farmers. By gauging how farmers accept inputs on credit, how much they sell to the aggregator, how much they keep for home consumption, and groundnut aflatoxin levels, the study can serve as a proof of concept to downstream premium buyers, NGOs, or government agencies seeking to enhance smallholders’ participation in premium value chains.

Because so many aspects of groundnut production and marketing are gendered the project will be conducted in a way that allows analysis of gender-specific differences in all outcomes and what may have caused those differences.