Farm typology-based strategy for targeted climate-smart agriculture interventions: A case study in the Guinea Savannah agro-ecological zone of Ghana

Abstract

Farms in Ghana’s Guinea Savannah are highly vulnerable to climate shocks, threatening food security and agricultural development. While climate-smart solutions exist, they often overlook the specific needs of farmers, including their social dynamics, resource endowments, and priorities. This study applies a farm typology approach to identify and characterize farm types and develop a tailored climate-smart agricultural (CSA) intervention strategy suited to the Guinea Savannah agro-ecological zone, covering four regions: Bono East, Northern, Upper West, and Upper East. Factor Analysis for Mixed Data was used to analyze farm typology, integrating principal component analysis and multiple correspondence analysis. This revealed four distinct farm types: Low, medium, medium-to-high, and high resource-endowed farms. Medium-to-high resource-endowed farms (43 ​%) predominated, followed by medium resource-endowed farms (28 ​%). Distribution of farm types varied across regions of the study zone: Low and medium-to-high resource-endowed farms were dominant in the Northern and Bono East regions, respectively, while medium and high resource-endowed farms were most common in the Upper West and Upper East regions, respectively. Climate risks faced by each farm type were identified. Drought was the primary risk to all farm types but its impact was most severe on low and high resource-endowed farms. A multi-step approach was then applied to develop CSA strategies tailored to each farm type, with context-specific CSA practices recommended to enhance farm resilience and agricultural development.