Off-farm Climate Change Adaptation Strategies and Farm Performance: Empirical Evidence from Northern Ghana

Climate change adaptation has been progressively expanded in the literature with various attempts made at understanding the main drivers of adaptations and how such practices affect farm performance. However, our current understanding stems primarily from climate adaptation practices at the farm level where adaptation decisions directly impact farm performance outcomes. This study investigated whether off-farm adaptation practices increase farm performance. Using primary data from 412 maize farmers across Northern Ghana, we applied a multivariate probit model to account for interdependent adaptation choices and an exponential conditional mean model to identify the causal impact of off-farm adaptation intensity on maize farm performance. We found that adoption of off-farm strategies is determined by household socio-economic characteristics (sex, age, marital status, household size, education, experience, and access to good road network), wealth and asset indicators (farm size and livestock ownership) and institutional affiliation variables (access to climate smart training, climate information, and extension service). Additionally, our results indicate that combining multiple off-farm CCAS such as livelihood diversification, NGO support, remittance and crop weather insurance, is expected to decrease maize production by 15%. Based on these findings, we suggest that efforts to promote off-farm CCAS adoption should be designed with complementary measures such as labor-saving technologies to avoid potential tradeoffs in farm performance.