by Sarah Grant, Director of Agribusiness - Ghana

“Farmers don’t keep records,” explained Anokye, a tenured field staff with Ghana’s Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MOFA), one of EWB’s long-standing partners.

“Why not?” I inquired, assuming it was second nature for farmers to keep close track of their expenses and incomes.

Laughing slightly at my puzzled reaction, Anokye replied, “farmers keep records in their heads... it is too discouraging for them to see the small profit they make.”

Any farmer in Canada would agree that record keeping is important to running a profitable business. It is not the action of keeping records that is valuable, but the outcome – the careful analysis of farming activities, leading to profit-informed decisions.

If record keeping is important for farmers in Ghana, what can MOFA do to encourage this practice? What would you do?

The most obvious action you might take would be to work with farmers individually; you would create a template together and help them fill it in. If they were illiterate, you would likely have their school-age child look after the records.

But these actions are not working.

According to Anokye, “the Ministry has been promoting record keeping for years, and yet farmers are slow to pick it up.”

But unlike the Ministry as a whole, Anokye has successfully facilitated this behaviour change.

“I tried many approaches. I gave examples of successful farmers who keep records. When that didn’t work, I had them calculate their profit and compared it to the profits of most farmers in their area.

“When that failed, I started to believe that farmers really didn't see any value in keeping records. But with time I came to understand that many farmers believed that something bad would happen to them if they made their assets public.”

Thanks to Anokye’s dedicated work to change this perception, dozens of farmers with Northern Ghana will experience greater security and prosperity.

Anokye’s story illuminates the importance of experimenting with multiple approaches in the field. This is under-emphasized in the development sector, where projects are often designed in offices far from the field, with predetermined results tied to timelines and funds.

EWB is working with MOFA to encourage more experimentation and learning. This kind of experimentation and learning at a field-level allows us to truly explore the root causes of an issue, and to find answers to the kinds of ‘why’ questions that enabled Anokye to create positive changes in farmer record-keeping behaviour.