Input Supply Structure for Yam Production in Ghana

Yam is an extremely important crop for at least 60 million rural poor producers, processors and consumers in West Africa providing multiple opportunities for poverty reduction and nourishment of poor people in the sub-region. Despite the importance of this crop, its production is stagnating, thus threatening rural livelihoods and urban food security. Input supply dealers to the yam sub-sector are quite scanty and rather focused on general agro inputs. Literature on the structure of yam input supply systems is scanty and non-existing. This creates inefficiencies in supplying the necessary inputs for production affecting productivity of the production process. The objective of this paper is therefore to provide a structural analysis of the input supply system and the role input dealers play in providing products and services to the production process. Through the use of stakeholder analysis and structured interviews, results revealed that 50% of agro input dealers interviewed provided herbicides to farmers. Information on input on high demand was through extension (43%) indicating the relevance of the extension services in information delivery. The most common form of assistance was training (42.86%) followed by advisory services (28.57%) with limited access to credit (4.29 %). Gross margins were quite faviourable such that seed yam had gross margin of GHC 30 per 100 tubers, agro chemicals was GHC 5/litre and fertilizer GHC 2.67/Bag. Strengthening the capital base of input dealers will make them more efficient to serve the production system effectively and productively. Keywords: Input dealer, yam production, labour , seed yam, agro input