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Article Title:
Monitoring Loan Repayment among Farmers in Techiman, Ghana: Investigating the Effect of Cooperative Farming System
by Alexander Ayogyam, Mensima Darko Goddana, Huudu Mohammed and Elvis Boateng

Abstract:
The main objective of this research is to investigate the effects of cooperative farming system on farmers? loan repayment ability since many funding institutions prefer to deal with groups instead of individuals in the framing communities. Many research works in this field have studied factors influencing individual farmers towards loan repayment but this paper extends the investigations by looking at farmers in a group or cooperative system. Two separate set of data were collected to enhance the findings (primary and secondary coming from cooperative groups). Based on an independent sample test, it was revealed that, the two groups were significantly different and so the factors necessitating the two conditions were not the same. This actually made the research inconclusive and since the groups that were not able to pay were the focal point of this research, primary data was then collected from group members through a random selection. A binary choice model (the logistic model) was used in the analysis of the data. The result of this analysis indicated that, polarization of religious background, number of married personalities in a group, size of a group, gender balance of a group and the variety of crops cultivated by the group were some group characteristics that affected the loan repayment performance of the groups. It was eventually recommended that, financial institutions in Ghana; should not entertain cooperative groups of single sex, must look out for groups whose members subscribe to the same religious faith and must always consider smaller groups as against larger ones.

Keywords: Cooperative farming system, Loan repayment, Farmers, polarization of religious faith.

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