Poultry farm certification and smallholder business performance: the role of financing alternatives

Purpose We assess the nexus amongst farm certification, business performance and agricultural financing alternatives amidst financial crisis using empirical insights from Ghana's smallholder poultry industry. Essentially, we investigate the effects of business funding alternatives on smallholder poultry farmers' willingness to adopt (WTA) certification standards and business/financial performance of poultry production. Design/methodology/approach Probit model with continuous endogenous covariates, linear regression with endogenous treatment effects, inverse-probability weights and augmented inverse-probability weights are estimated using recent cross-sectional data from poultry farmers. Findings We observe low awareness of poultry farm certification, and no poultry farm is certified. Nevertheless, WTA certification is fairly high. Due to low access to external-financing, self-financing and smallholders dominate Ghana's poultry industry. Education, main occupation, association membership, labour type, trust in certification, type of financing and training determine WTA certification, type of financing and scale of production. Moreover, poultry farmers with external-financing were superior in WTA certification, scale of production, annual income, income diversification and contract farming than farmers with self-financing. Research limitations/implications Training/awareness programmes should be organized by stakeholders on certification and financing options for farmers. Originality/value Previous studies have failed to explore potential causal relationships among poultry farm certification, business/financial performances and agricultural financing alternatives.