Impact Of Rainfall Pattern On Cocoa Yield In Mampong Cocoa District In The Ashanti Region
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Date
2019-11
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KNUST
Abstract
This study sought to examine the impact of rainfall pattern on cocoa yield in Mampong Cocoa District covering total land area (hectres) of 782km2 with 69 settlements in the Ashanti Region. Longitudinal research design was adopted for the study’s data collection and analysis. Time series secondary data was employed to engage in quantitative analysis. The study adopted Auto Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) models to examine both short run (S-RN) and long run (L-RN) impact of rainfall and temperature patterns on cocoa yield over a period of 13 years (from 2003 to 2016). Pixel values for temperature were obtained from Landsat 7 Thermal Band, while rainfall values were gathered from CHIRPS. In addition, data on cocoa yield were gathered from Ghana COCOBOD’s (2018) annual reports. The data were grouped in Microsoft Excel 2013, while Stata version 14 was used for the data analysis. The study found a significant L-RN (positive) relationship among change in cocoa yield and change in anRF and change in annual temperature (ΔanTmP) in the Mampong Cocoa District over time. However, both change in annual rainfall (ΔanRF) and change in anTmP have insignificant effect on change in annual cocoa yield in the S-RN period. It was therefore recommended that policies, programmes and interventions of the government and other stakeholder in the cocoa sector that would rely on rainfall and temperature pattern should be targeted for long term periods instead of short term. This is so because L-RN impact of rainfall and temperature on cocoa yield is highly significant; while the S-RN impact of rainfall and temperature cocoa yield is insignificant.
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A Thesis Submitted to the Department of Geomatic Engineering, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements For The Degree Of MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY IN GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS (GIS)