Agriculture Opinion Leaders in Ghana

Given that extension agents were cited by farmers more often than friends, family, and “other farmers in the community” as sources on technical issues, it may be wise to focus on communicating through extension agents rather than focusing on opinion leaders. Clearly, extension agents are already organized and more easily mobilized, putting them in a better position to interact with widely dispersed communities.

However, the personal connections of opinion leaders in farming communities should not be overlooked; whereas opinion leaders may not possess the knowledge base of extension agents, they may be in a better position to influence the practices of those in their communities. For development organizations who want to identify and work through local opinion leaders—those who say people come to them “very often” for opinions and advice about farming—we provide a profile of the seven percent of crop farmers (51 individuals) surveyed who identified themselves as opinion leaders in farming.  [1]

These individuals were more than twice as likely as the general population to use both newspapers and government officials to gather general news and information (22 percent of opinion leaders said they read newspapers for news/information in the last week, compared to 10 percent of other farmers; 19 percent of opinion leaders said they got news/information from government officials in the last week, compared to 5 percent of other farmers).

For specific farming information, opinion leaders were significantly more likely to mention extension agents, other farmers, and farming supply vendors as sources (see here for national averages).

Table 1
                  

The profile of opinion leaders, as shown in Table 1, is skewed toward males, older respondents and those with more education. However, income level and the type of farming the respondent engaged in (on their own land, on rented land, shared plots, or as laborers on other people’s land) did not factor heavily in opinion leader demographics.

One strategy to increase the impact of word-of-mouth information in agriculture might be to work (perhaps in cooperation with existing extension services) to widen the pool of local experts by training female farmers and those with little or no formal education to act as peer educators on farming issues. 

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[1] Since only 10 individuals said that people come to them very often for opinions and advice about livestock, this section focuses on crop farming.