Land tenure and investment in productive inputs in Ghanaian cocoa farming: A generalised structural equation modelling approach

Food insecurity and poverty are major barriers to economic growth and development in sub-Saharan Africa, especially Ghana. Pursuing sustainable agricultural development through the promotion of agricultural innovations and investment in productive inputs is one of the surest approaches to addressing these barriers. However, land tenure issues are threat to a widespread of agricultural innovations and land-related investments. Using cross-sectional data from 400 cocoa farmers in southern Ghana, we analyse the relationship between land tenure systems and investment decision in farm inputs and evaluate factors influencing the land tenure decision of cocoa farmers simultaneously using a generalised structural equation model. We find that socioeconomic characteristics such as residence status, ethnicity and location differences explain farmers’ land tenure choices. Compared to farmers who owned land title, we find that farmers operating on family lands or sharecropping invest less in hybrid cocoa seedlings, fertiliser, land, and labour. The findings suggest the need to strengthen the customary land tenure system to improve land tenure security to enable land users to invest in long-term land productivity measures.