Crop diversification and multidimensional poverty in rural Ghana: the empirical linkages

The Sustainable Development Goals seek to eliminate poverty, yet a considerable section of the world's population remains impoverished, particularly in the global south. This has led to a renewed focus on fostering crop diversity as a strategy of increasing farm revenue and consequently reducing poverty. However, there is little empirical evidence on how crop diversification can lessen multidimensional poverty in developing countries like Ghana. This study used the seventh wave of the Ghana Living Standard Survey (GLSS 7) to examine the factors associated with the intensity of crop diversification practice, as well as the impact of crop diversification on multidimensional poverty in rural Ghana. The two-part hurdle and recursive bivariate probit models were used. The findings show that the factors related to the decision to practice crop diversification differ significantly from those associated with the extent of practice. The estimates also reveal that crop diversification is a declining function of multidimensional poverty, and agricultural income was identified as a potential conduit through which crop diversification affects multidimensional poverty. Therefore, to reduce multidimensional poverty and achieve sustainability, policy guidelines must not only address concerns about crop diversification practice, but also explicitly offer a roadmap towards practical crop diversification implementation such as improving access to market and promoting climate-resilient cropping systems.