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Abstract
Small farmers grow peanuts to feed their families and to sell a portion of the crop to raise cash to pay, among others, their children school fees. The dual nature of peanut crop has been recognized, but not rigorously examined. The amount of sold peanuts depends on a number of factors and varies by location. This paper specifies an empirical relationship modeling the volume of sold peanuts using the survey data collected among small farmers in northern Ghana. The truncated nature of the dependent variable, the number of sold bags of peanuts, led to the application of the Tobit model. Among variables significantly influencing the number of sold bags are respondent and farm characteristics, prices, and general features of the environment in which a farmer sells peanuts, including distance to markets and credit access. Farmers choose to store peanuts rather than selling them at harvest because prices tend to increase, although by a small amount.