Willingness of Local Rice Producers to Supply and Participate in the Ghana School Feeding Programme Market: A Case Study of Selected Districts in Northern Ghana

The government of Ghana is not an exception with regards to putting in place measures that aim to improve the lives and livelihoods of its citizenry including the welfare of school children. In the context of the New Partnership for Africa Development (NEPAD's) Comprehensive African Development Programme (CADP), the Government of Ghana (GoG) set-up the Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP). Its concept of home grown school feeding addresses one of the United Nation's (UN's) three pillars to fight hunger (United Nations, 2005). ‘The government of Ghana was of the view that the if the School Feeding Programme was properly funded and implemented, the hunger, education and the food security and poverty landscape in Ghana will change for good (Government of Ghana, 2006). The study investigates the factors determining GSFP caterer's choice to buy local rice from farmers and farmers' factors influencing rice farmers to supply to the caterers. Purposive sampling was mainly used to select 120 respondents from GSFP beneficiary communities. The respondents were made of up 80 farmers and 40 GSFP caterers from the four selected districts. The study revealed that 46% % of rice farmers have access to the market created by the Ghana school Feeding Programme and about 48% of this group are able to sell their rice produce to the caterers of GSFP. However majority of the rice farmers are aware of the existence of the programme without any proper rules of engagement except that less than half of the farmers have been linked up with programme with the support of World Food Programme and the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV), operating in the Northern Region. The major problem associated with rice farmers accessibility to the GSFP is caterers' unwillingness to buy from them even though majority of the farmers are aware of the programme and its basic of objective of providing free meals to pupils in basic schools. Farmers indicated they would be willing to sell to the caterers if the prices offered by caterers are good or if they are able to produce enough to meet the demand of caterers on termly basis or the caterer is more willing to pay them in cash when they purchase their rice or other farm produce or better still be willing to pay on time for a period not more than one month when they buy on credit. The probit model was used to analyse the factors influencing rice farmers to supply to the programme on one hand and the factors affecting caterer's decision to purchase rice from the rice farmers on the other.