My project would examine how market institutions affect the performance of certification programs, and the attendant impacts on intermediary buyers and smallholders. It would advance the design of a framework for implementing and assessing certification of smallholders. Such a framework is imperative because of the increasing use of certification as components of environmentally and socially sustainable agribusiness and public food policy. The project design would be grounded in a mixed-method approach, using grounded-theory, and theories in institutional and information economics. The widespread certification of cash crops in Ghana provides a context with different market institutions for this project. Data will be collected from intermediary buyers and smallholders using focus groups discussions, in-depth interviews, and surveys. Qualitative and survey data would be analyzed using iterative coding, and descriptive and inferential statistics as well as regression models respectively.
