Cocoa
farmers in selected production districts in Ghana are accessing support in
natural resource management for efficient and sustainable cocoa production.
The
‘Cocoa Eco Project’ is a pilot intervention aimed at limiting the encroachment
of cocoa plantations onto forest lands and conservation of biodiversity.
SNV
Ghana is partnering the Kuapa Kokoo Farmers Union to create environmental
awareness among cocoa farmers, especially on issues of land degradation and
deforestation.
“We
are expecting that at the end of the project cycle, we would be able to partner
other organizations to scale-up to cover other districts in promoting increased
productivity by way of adapting modern production methods in the cocoa sector”,
says Ernest Adzim, Associate Advisor at SNV Ghana.
The
30-month project, covering ten cocoa growing districts, is to increase income
levels and improve livelihood of targeted farmers.
Cocoa
farming is one of the dominant land use activities in Ghana with an estimated
cultivation area of over 1.6 million hectares, according to the World
Bank.
Cocoa
production has been identified as one of the sectors that will seriously be hit
by climate change.
Ghana
is the second largest producer of cocoa in the world, but productivity is among
the lowest in the world – average yield is 330kg per hectare, compared to Ivory
Coast’s 580kg.
Increasing
production demands expansion of area under cultivation, with the resultant
effect of converting forests to farming systems which leads to decline in
carbon stocks.
Isaac
Boah, an Internal Control Officer with Kuapa Kokoo Limited, acknowledges the importance
of planting cocoa with trees, “in order to prevent direct sunlight from going
down to the soil”.
The
Cocoa Eco Project will expose the farmers to interventions in climate mitigation
and adaptation to ensure sustainable cocoa production.
“The
effect of climate change is real”, stated Mr. Adzim. “You talk to the farmers
from the north to the middle-belt to the south, they see this effect in terms
of disease incidence, in terms of rainfall pattern, in terms of pest and
planting times”.
Agronomic
activities to be introduced under the intervention, according to him, include “soil
fertility improvement by way of introducing shade into cocoa plantations and
also generating income by planting trees”.
The trees will serve two purposes – provide source of energy by way of
fuel wood as well as introducing nitrogen and other nutrients that cocoa may
need in the soil.
An
estimated 800,000 farm household depends on the cocoa sector for the primary
livelihood.
Climate
scientists at the Colombia-based International Centre for Tropical Agriculture
(CIAT) have predicted that the expected increasing temperatures will lead to
massive declines in cocoa production in Ghana and other cocoa-growing areas in
West Africa by 2030.
Story
by Kofi Adu Domfeh
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