Achieving greater participation in agricultural production: A study of government workers in the Upper west region of Ghana

This paper assessed factors influencing participation in agricultural production by government workers in the Upper West Regions of Ghana. A cross-sectional survey design was employed, using purposive and simple random sampling techniques to select 400 respondents across four (4) municipalities in the Upper West Region (UWR) for interview. Data were analyzed using the Heckman two-stage model to determine the extent to which factors critical to the participation in agricultural production by government workers. Results show that the majority (85.2 %) of government workers participate in one form or the other in agricultural production. They are specifically involved in crop production that is; food, and cash crops production as well as animal production. The need to supplement family food needs and to earn extra income was seen to condition their choice to participate in agriculture. The first and second stage predicting factors are income, access to extension, knowledge in agriculture and government policies; these were found to be statistically significant at 1 %. Time availability was significant at 5 %, however, sex, age, household size, credit availability, access to credit, passion for agriculture, scarcity of food, market access and cost of food were all found to be statistically significant at 10 %. We recommend that MoFA and its development partners in agriculture, effectively use local media and community visits to create more awareness among government workers on agricultural programmes and policies, since extension and knowledge in agriculture influence participation in agriculture production as revealed by the study in the UWR.