Department of Economics

Iowa State University has joined a partnership to improve agricultural policy making, policy analysis and implementation in the African country of Ghana. The work is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) through its Feed the Future Agriculture Policy Support Project. Iowa State joins Chemonics, an international development company; the Centre for Policy Analysis, a non-governmental think tank in Ghana; and the Ghana Institute of Management and
Public Administration on the four-year, $15 million grant.

The ISU component of the project is led by John Beghin, professor of economics and a researcher in the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, and Manjit Misra, director of the Seed Science Center who leads the Global Food Security Consortium. Iowa State’s subcontract in the grant is worth $1.145 million.

This project is called the Ghana Feed the Future Agricultural Policy Support Project. It is a capacity building project that will focus on policies affecting seeds and fertilizer use, and smallholder subsistence farming.

Ghana’s agriculture sector represents 30 percent of its gross domestic product and 50 percent of its employment, but is not growing at a pace needed to eliminate food insecurity. This project is designed to complement other USAID efforts by supporting measures where the political will for reform connects with the constraints facing agribusinesses.