Effect of farmer–herder conflict adaptation strategies on multidimensional poverty and subjective wellbeing in Ghana

Abstract

Farmer–herder conflicts deepen the incidence of poverty and worsen the wellbeing of both farming and herding households in Sub-Saharan Africa. In order to cope with the effects of conflict on their livelihoods, households adopt various adaptation strategies. This paper assesses the effects of adopting conflict adaptation strategies on the multidimensional poverty and subjective wellbeing of farmers and herders using primary data from 500 households (400 farming households and 100 herding households) from two farmer–herder conflict hotspot districts in Ghana. Specifically, the paper analyses the determinants of adopting adaptation strategies, and measures the effect of adopting these strategies on the multidimensional poverty and subjective wellbeing of households using multinomial endogenous switching regression to account for selectivity bias. We found that households’ adoption of adaptation strategies is positively correlated with cattle killing, vulnerability to farmer–herder conflict, household size and labour size, access to land, nearness of farms to cattle grazing routes, access to extension services, and expectations of future occurrence of the conflict. On the other hand, households’ adoption of adaptation strategies is negatively correlated with leisure time, incidences of crop destruction in the past, experience in farming/herding, and membership of farmer-based organisations. We also found that, although the adoption of both on-farm and non-farm adaptation strategies by farming households, and herding and non-herding adaptation strategies by herding households, significantly reduce multidimensional poverty and increase subjective wellbeing. Households’ multidimensional poverty levels are reduced to a greater extent and subjective wellbeing improved if farming households focus on adopting only on-farm adaptation strategies, and herding households focus on adopting only herding adaptation strategies. Hence, interventions aimed at mitigating the effect of farmer–herder conflict on households’ poverty and wellbeing should focus on promoting on-farm and herding adaptation strategies for farming and herding households, respectively.