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Abstract
Climate variability, the short-term fluctuations in the weather and agriculture affect each other. Climate
variability affects the agroecological and growing conditions of crops and livestock, and is recently
believed to be the greatest impediment to the realisation of the first Millennium Development Goal of
reducing poverty and food insecurity in arid and semi-arid regions of developing countries. Conversely,
agriculture is a major contributor to climate variability and change by emitting greenhouse gases and
reducing the agroecology’s potential for carbon sequestration. What however, is the empirical evidence of
this inter-dependence of climate variability and agriculture in Sub-Sahara Africa? In this paper, I provide
some insight into the long run relationship between inter-annual variations in temperature and rainfall,
and annual yields of the most important staple food crops in Northern Ghana. Applying pooled panel data
of rainfall, temperature and yields of the selected crops from 1976 to 2010 to cointegration and Granger
causality models, there is cogent evidence of cointegration between seasonal, total rainfall and crop
yields; and causality from rainfall to crop yields in the Sudano-Guinea Savannah and Guinea Savannah
zones of Northern Ghana. This suggests that inter-annual yields of the crops have been influenced by the
total mounts of rainfall in the planting season. Temperature variability over the study period is however
stationary, and is suspected to have minimal if any effect on crop yields. Overall, the results confirm the
appropriateness of my attempt in modelling long-term relationships between the climate and crop yield
variables.