Cocoa productivity half its potential

Ghana’s cocoa farmers have the ability to double productivity, currently below levels in other leading producers, if they receive the appropriate incentivising income and benefit from improved agronomic practices and extension services.

Output could rise to between 800 to 1,000 kilogrammes per hectare (kg/ha) from 400 kg/ha presently, said Rita Owusu-Amankwa, National Coordinator of the Ghana Cocoa Platform, a forum created by the regulator, Cocobod, and other industry players to promote the industry’s welfare.

She said cocoa productivity in Ghana, the world’s number-two grower, is far below levels in top-grower Ivory Coast and third-largest Indonesia, which produce 600 kg/ha and 1,000kg/ha respectively.

Mrs. Owusu-Amankwa, who was addressing an industry meeting in Accra, said the cocoa sector is beset with a myriad of challenges such as weak institutions and coordination; pests and plant diseases; inadequate extension services; environmental threats; poor access to credit and inputs; as well as low farmer income.

“The combined effects of these challenges are manifested in the relatively low productivity per hectare,” she stated.

Approximately 700,000 farmers are employed in the country’s cocoa industry, and the crop has been a main export commodity since independence.

But being a seasonal crop, the income of most of farmers is very low, inhibiting their ability to invest in appropriate agronomic practices that ensure high productivity. Another threat is the upsurge in mining activities by both corporate firms and artisanal miners, who have converted large swathes of farmland into mines.

“The majority of the gold mining operations in the country occurs within the cocoa-growing areas. Since mining and farming of any kind cannot co-exist on the same piece of land, the setting up of new mines and the expansion of existing ones come at the expense of existing farms, including cocoa farms, and also hinders access to land for farming,” said Mrs. Owusu-Amankwa.

“It is possible that Ghana might have lost thousands of hectares of cocoa farms and patches of forest land that could have been used for cocoa farming to mining operations in the last decade. This trend is likely to continue as more mining companies keep on springing up every year.”

She also mentioned challenges such as weak integration of policies and legislation as well lack of a common vision for development of the sector.

Cocoa production nonetheless has risen during the past decade, jumping from below half-a-million tonnes in 2003 to about 850,000 tonnes currently. In 2010/11, production peaked at one million tonnes, the highest on record.

But the crop’s price has dwindled since that peak, and the price paid to farmers per tonne has increased by just 3.4 percent in two seasons including the ongoing 2013/14 crop-year.

This year, to maintain the same price of GH¢3,392 per tonne paid to farmers in the 2012/13 season, Cocobod raised farmers’ share of the net Free on Board (FOB) price from78.4 percent to 79.2 percent. In 2003, farmers’ share was 66 percent of the FOB.

Harrie Hendrickx, Regional Manager of Solidaridad West Africa -- an industry body that advocates and invests in sustainable production of cocoa -- called for reform of the sector to address the lack of coordination among various units within the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, poor infrastructure, and poor management of extension services.