**4. Conclusions and Recommendations**

Although extreme weather events such as El Niño in Ghana have been linked to the failure of crops such as maize, which provides an important source of nutrition for humans and animals and contributes to the national economy, it is unclear what factors were behind the 2020 minor season maize production failure that led to a massive shortage in and price increase of maize grains. Accordingly, this study sought to advance existing knowledge by examining the factors behind the 2020 minor season crop failure at Ejura-Sekyedumase Municipality, a major maize production area in the transitional agroecological zone of Ghana. In addition, the constraints to building smallholder farmers' resilience to crop failures, food insecurity and rural poverty were investigated.

The respondents' views and the empirical meteorological data showed the recurrence of drought during the 2020 minor growing season, which resulted in the withering and failure of the maize plant. The prevalence of fall armyworm attacks on maize plants, which was also linked to the dry and warm conditions during the growing period, contributed substantially to the 2020 minor maize production failures. According to the farmers, other factors such as poor soils, a general lack of inputs and under-resourced mechanization, may have contributed, albeit minimally, to the observed maize failure during the 2020 minor growing season.

Multiple agronomic changes are being adopted by the smallholder farmers to reduce the risk of maize production failures. The notable agronomic changes reported included administering multiple pesticides to control pests (especially the fall arm worms), taking advantage of early rains to sow, sowing later when the rainfall is stable, increasing the use of fertilizers, crop rotation, and the planting of leguminous crops to improve soil quality. However, the inability of the farmers to master the onset and cessation of rainfall, the general ineffectiveness of pesticides, financial burdens, the general high prices of agrochemicals, and the unregulated farm-gate prices of maize are constraining maize production. From the point of view of the farmers and key informants, there is a need to build farmers' capacity and resilience through, for example, making loans more accessible, extending government policy on subsidizing fertilizers to other farm inputs such as pesticides and weedicides, developing irrigation (rainwater harvesting) facilities for farmers, regulating market prices, and implementing the standardization of maize grain measurement to benefit farmers.

Based on these findings, it is recommended that the government promotes and supports rainwater harvesting through, for instance, extending the government flagship program on 1V1D to the municipality to address prolonged droughts and help reduce pest outbreaks. There is an urgent need to marry farmers' indigenous knowledge of climate forecasting and controlling the fall armyworm outbreaks with science. In the case of the former, effective collaboration between the Ministry of Food and Agriculture and the Ghana Meteorological Agency is necessary to link climate information with agronomic practice, so that seasonal climate information can be relayed to the farmers in a timely manner. There is also a need for research and field trials of existing commercial pesticides and locally used materials in order to control the fall armyworm. When doing this, the farmers' indigenous knowledge should be considered to ensure easy adoption.

**Supplementary Materials:** The following supporting information can be downloaded at: https: //www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/su14063514/s1, Figure S1: Average monthly min temperature of Ejura-Sekyedumase for the period 2015–2020.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, K.O. and P.B.O.; methodology, P.B.O.; investigation, P.B.O., I.K.A. and K.O.; writing—draft preparation, P.B.O.; writing—review and editing, K.O., I.K.A. and P.B.O.; funding acquisition, K.O. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** The authors wish to thank the Office of Research, Innovation and Development (ORID), University of Ghana (UG) for offering support (grant number UG-ORID/BSU/III/WP3/POSTDOC/2021- 2022/0010 through the BSU III Building Stronger Universities Pilot Research Initiative project to support the fieldwork that resulted in the production of this paper.

**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.

**Informed Consent Statement:** Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.

**Data Availability Statement:** The data presented in this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

**Acknowledgments:** We gratefully appreciate the active participation of the research participants. We are thankful to the Municipal Agriculture Directorate for providing us with maize production data, and Ohene Asa for assisting with the map work.
