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A Typology of Young Cocoa Farmers: Attitudes, Motivations and Aspirations

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Abstract

This paper presents a typology to highlight and describe the variation in attitudes among young farmers in rural Ghana, a group that has been treated in policy discourses and in development practice as largely homogenous. It further identifies motivations and aspirations associated with each type. A cluster analysis of survey data from 120 respondents yielded two types of young farmers: ‘positive’ and ‘resigned’. The likelihood of being in either category was found to be related to marital status, location, and whether one had a secondary occupation. Further, the ‘positive’ group was more likely to report being influenced by adult role models and more likely to aspire to stay in farming. Our findings underscore the relevance of socio-economic and ecological environment on young people’s attitudes to and decisions regarding farming and, consequently, on the outcome of policy and programmatic interventions meant to increase their participation in agriculture.

Résumé

Cet article présente une typologie qui vise à mettre en évidence et à décrire les variations en termes d’attitudes chez les jeunes agriculteurs dans les zones rurales du Ghana, qui ont été considérés—dans les discours politiques comme dans la pratique des programmes de développement—comme un groupe globalement homogène. En outre, l’article identifie les motivations et les aspirations associées à chaque type. Une analyse par grappes des données d'enquête auprès de 120 participants a révélé deux types de jeunes agriculteurs: les « positifs» et les « résignés». La probabilité d'appartenir à l'une ou l'autre de ces catégories était liée à l'état matrimonial, à l'emplacement et à l'activité secondaire. De plus, le groupe des « positifs» était plus susceptible de déclarer être influencé par un adulte jouant le rôle de modèle et plus susceptible également de vouloir rester dans l'agriculture. Nos résultats soulignent la pertinence de l'environnement socio-économique et écologique sur les attitudes et les décisions des jeunes concernant l'agriculture et, par conséquent, sur les résultats des interventions politiques et programmatiques destinées à accroître leur participation à l'agriculture.

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  • 06 June 2022

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Notes

  1. The 15–35 age range encompasses individuals at different life phases and, for that reason, is somewhat limited as an analytical category. However, given the reference in this paper to the youth-agricultural nexus as an important policy issue on the African continent, and the hope that the paper can potentially contribute to evidence-based policymaking, we use this age range which has been adopted by the African Union. It is arguably more contextuallyrelevant than the 15-24 year range used by the World Bank and United Nations agencies, for instance, because it appears to acknowledge the social and economic constraints that may delay young people in their achievement of independent adulthood (see Honwana 2012 and Mueller and Thurlow 2019). Practically, for our study, the 15–35 range allows us to include more young people who have established farming as an occupation, as the literature shows that more intensive (including full-time) engagement in farming occurs at older ages (Yeboah and Jayne 2020).

  2. Though scales with higher points can provide more information about respondents’ subjective evaluation, for our type of study, we agree with Jacoby and Mattel (1971) that both reliability and validity of response outcomes are fairly independent of the number of response choices.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the CGIAR Research Programme on Integrated Systems for the Humid Tropics (Humidtropics) and undertaken by a collaboration between the University of Ghana, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana (CRIG/06/2020/052/003). We are also grateful to the anonymous EJDR reviewers for their helpful comments which helped strengthen the paper.

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Amon-Armah, F., Anyidoho, N.A., Amoah, I.A. et al. A Typology of Young Cocoa Farmers: Attitudes, Motivations and Aspirations. Eur J Dev Res 35, 770–793 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41287-022-00538-w

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