Toward Quality Upgrading of Rice Production in SSA: Experimental Evidence from Northern Ghana

Quality improvement of domestic milled rice is an urgent issue in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) because cannot compete with imports the growing urban market. Past studies considered poor milling facilities to be a major factor leading inferior quality rice. However, even modern recently established SSA, not yet necessarily competitive imports. Thus, finding ways improve paddy remains important question SSA. We hypothesize that lack knowledge and its relationship price causes farmers continue producing low-quality paddy. conduct field experiment northern Ghana verify this hypothesis. randomly selected 108 villages 10 producers from each villages. From sample, we chose 54 treatment provided information about quality-enhancing technologies parameters appreciated by Utilizing data collected before after intervention, found intervention significantly influenced adoption some practices. Moreover, induced behavioral changes among treated farmers: they sold more aromatic varieties outside village than control received higher sales price. conclude provision quality-based pricing improved farmers’ production management market sales. It noteworthy low-cost without any technical training was able generate sufficiently desirable outcomes.