World Food Policy Volume 2, Number 1, Spring 2015 | Page 46

How Promising is the Rice Green Revolution in Sub-Saharan Africa?

The case of Ghana: The case study
in Northern Ghana is unique, in that it
compares the rice-farming performance
between villages where the Lowland
Rice Development Project (LRDP) was
implemented and villages where no
such project was implemented (deGraftJohnson et al. 2014). Twenty project
villages and 40 non-project villages were
selected randomly for this study and in
each village 20 rice-farming households
were surveyed.9 Out of 40 non-project
villages, 20 are located within a 20 km
radius of any of the project villages and
the other 20 are located beyond the 20
km radius. The former are called “nearby
villages” and the latter “remote villages.”
The LRDP, which was implemented from
1998 to 2003, was designed to promote the
dissemination of MVs, chemical fertilizer
use, bunding, leveling, and dibbling.10
Aside from the practice of dibbling, the
four technologies are essential components
of Asian Green Revolution technology.
Thus, in a sense, the purpose of LRDP
was to transfer Asian Green Revolution
technology to SSA. Transplanting was not
recommended because this area suffers
from floods and seedlings cannot survive
under submerged conditions.

According to Figure 3, improved
technologies were seldom adopted before
the implementation of the LRDP. During
the LRDP implementation period they
were adopted primarily in the project
villages, whereas they were diffused to

nearby villages after the LRDP period,
suggesting technology spillove rs from the
project to other villages. The adoption
rates of new technologies are generally
low in remote villages.11 It is clear that the
adoption rates of both MVs and chemical
fertilizer are equally high, which indicates
the strong complementarity between
fertilizer-responsive MVs and fertilizer.
Leveling is adopted by about half of
the sample farmers at present, whereas
bunding and dibbling are not widely
adopted. Another important observation
is that the rate of dis-adoption, i.e.,
adoption in the past but discontinuation
later, is high for dibbling. According to
our respondents, dibbling is highly labor
intensive, and this is the major reason
for dis-adoption. Thus, we suspect that
dibbling may not be the appropriate
technology in this region.
Table
4
summarizes
the
technology adoption, paddy yield, labor
use, and the factor share of labor. It is
clear that the rice yield is lowest among
non-adopters of new technology, which is
1.5 ton/ha and falls in the expected range
under rain-fed conditions without new
technologies. The yield becomes higher
as larger amounts of new technologies are
adopted. It is interesting to observe that
an average yield of 2.6 ton/ha among fullpackage technology adopters is almost
identical to the average lowland rice
yield under rain-fed conditions in Asia
in the late 1980s reported by David and

9

Reliable data were obtained from 545 households.
Dibbling is a crop establishment method in which seeds are planted in holes created by sticks. Dibbling is not needed, if paddy fields are well bunded and leveled so that broadcasted seeds are germinated well.
11
Socioeconomic conditions are very similar between the project and nearby villages, whereas the
remote villages are far from the capital city and endowed with large land areas.
10

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