Systemic Intervention to Tackle the Constraints and Challenges Facing Stakeholders and the Performance of the Agricultural Sector in Ghana Kwamina E. Banson, Systems Design and Complexity Management Business School, The University of Adelaide, SA 5005 Australia kwamina.banson@adelaide.edu.au Nam C. Nguyen 1 and Ockie J. H. Bosch 2 Systems Design and Complexity Management Business School, The University of Adelaide, SA 5005 Australia nam.nguyen@adelaide.edu.au 1 ockie.bosch@adelaide.edu.au 2 Abstract - Constraints and challenges in Ghana’s agricultural industry limit its throughput. A policy constraint is an issue when it comes to agricultural sustainability. A fresh approach to interventions and capacity-building using systems thinking approach; the four levels of thinking and the Evolutionary Learning Laboratory during a stakeholder workshop in Ghana has shown remarkable impact on the ability of the agricultural industry to evolve, improve, and raise its efficacy. With stakeholder’s interventions, the Bayesian belief network (BBN) models indicated that, agricultural productivity level will rise from 57.5 to 92.2% reducing poverty level from 44.9 to 10.0% below the poverty line. Also farmers yield and profit increased. The BBN revealed the impact of uncertainty on management systems to be accounted for in the decision making process. This means that decision makers can balance the desirability of an outcome against the chance that the management option selected may fail to achieve it. Keywords: Systems thinking, Agriculture, Productivity, Policy, sustainability. 1 Introduction Constraints and challenges as a result of growth, acceleration and rapid changes in the agricultural system limit the throughput of the sector as a whole and impacts on stakeholders quality of life [1]. Agricultural policy constraint has been a major issue when it comes to agricultural sustainability and these can be even more pernicious and deleterious to the effectiveness of the agricultural industry and the potent of livelihood and the environment [2, 3]. Many people in Ghana are living in poverty and as a result continue to use natural resources in an unsustainable manner, which continue to degrade natural ecosystems[4]. Agriculture policy has a central role to play in promoting growth and poverty reduction in the Ghanaian economy. The last ten years had shown numerous and encouraging modernisation efforts to improve the agriculture sector in Ghana. Traditional and reductionist approaches through collaborations between research institutions, universities, end users and other development partners have attempted to address many of the constraints facing the agriculture industry, however agricultural production and productivity keep declining because of reductionist approach to interventions [5]. Therefore agricultural sustainability requires a fresh approach to interventions and capacity building, based on systems thinking. This paper addresses sustainability constraints and challenges affecting the performance of the agricultural sectors in Ghana using systems thinking approach and various tools and methods to fixing the problems. 2. Evolutional Learning Laboratory for managing complex challenges Figure 1: steps in evolutional learning laboratory for managing complex challenges The methodology of research used in this study basically includes literature and industry survey through the use of the “four level thinking model” shown in Figure 1, adopted from Bosch et al. (2013). Figure 1 model starts at the ‘fourth level of thinking’, which is the initial step, involving a series of workshops with stakeholders to gather their mental model through Cultural Values Political Forces 3. Develop Systems Models 4. Identify Leverage Points 5. Develop Appropriate Management Strategies 1. Identify Issues 2. Build Capacity Implementation 6. Reflections 7. Environmental Economic Social Patterns & Relationship s Systems Structure Stakeholder Mental Model Events Proc. of the 2014 9th International Conference on System of Systems Engineering (SOSE), Adelaide, Australia - June 9-13, 2014 978-1-4799-5227-4/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE 31