May 2012 C&CI • Food Security • 19 By employing business management
concepts to their daily work, farmers are increasing their household incomes. The result: more disposable income to cover household expenses, including food, school fees, and healthcare. Studies have also demonstrated a strong inverse relationship between rising levels of income and the presence of the worst forms of child labour in West Africa’s cocoa sector.
Institutional strengthening
Cocoa is a reliable cash crop but productivity is low and a few bags provide little income
Development Goals. The focus is on work- ing with West African farmers, such as Mr Kwarteng, to ensure sustainable, food secure households in cocoa growing com- munities in two key ways:
Teaching, and then following up, to ensure that farmers are applying what they learn about basic production and business practices, and
Institutional strengthening. Simply put, farmers who apply good
agricultural practices (GAP) and use sound business models can improve their productivity and yields in as little as one or two growing seasons. These practices help to support sustainable livelihoods and food secure households in cocoa producing communities while also addressing environmental and social issues. In the cocoa sector, GAP might include
planting oil palm trees, fruit trees, plantain, coconut trees, and other shade trees at 10ft intervals to provide the right amount of shade to cocoa. Products from the other trees provide additional food for the house- hold and extra income if brought to local markets. GAP also includes proper application to
cocoa trees of fertilizers and appropriate use of insecticides and fungicides that are transferable to other food crops. For exam- ple, a farmer who applies fertilizer to a cocoa tree will also be applying fertilizer to the shade tree growing alongside it.
Application of such GAPs to other crops
has the potential to also improve productiv- ity of the entire farm. These improvements occur on the same plot of land that farmers have always worked, and constitute a sustainable alternative to buying up more land (which most farmers cannot afford) and/or deforesting new areas to use for mono-cropping of cocoa.
Good agricultural practices
GAP also focuses on training farmers to use improved planting materials. This helps raise yields and incomes, ultimately impact- ing food security. For example, in Ghana, farmers begin to establish their own nurs- eries from improved seedlings accessed from Ghana Cocoa Board (Cocobod) exten- sion agents. Coupled with other good agri- cultural practices, such as pruning, younger trees produce more cocoa than older trees. In Mr Kwarteng’s case, before being trained, he eschewed pruning any of his trees and had not properly applied fertilizer. Farmer training also must include instruc-
tion in business management practices on and off the farm. Many smallholder farmers in West Africa fail to calculate farm costs as compared to earned income. With training, they manage business costs for the next growing season. This also helps farmers decide for themselves to diversify their income so that they can offset losses incurred, for example, when the cocoa crop is adversely affected by weather.
Cocoa-producing countries in West Africa have a vested interest in the crop’s growth and reliability. Revenue earned by cocoa exports is a significant counterbalance to the costs of other food imports (especially wheat and rice, which are highly desired by urban populations). Cocoa offsets by a ratio of more than 3:1 the value of those commodities. Recognising cocoa’s national impor-
tance, Ghana, for example, is actively strengthening relevant institutions. Much of this support takes the form of private-public partnerships (PPPs), which increasingly are the vehicle for carrying out holistic cocoa sustainability programmes that focus on comprehensive production and business training for farmers, as well as increased lit- eracy for cocoa growing communities. With the support of private-public partner-
ships, cocoa extension work in Ghana has expanded to more cocoa growing commu- nities. Production and business trainings like those described above are embraced by government, and interventions have also spurred on efficiency in government provi- sion of inputs, such as fertilizer. The entire cocoa value chain benefits, from the farm to getting cocoa and other produce to market, to training and building capacity locally for cocoa logistics, such as land transport and shipping. These processes all reinforce the value of successful cocoa productivity for the farmer and the nation.
Food security calculation
Improved production practices in cocoa farming, supported by international devel- opment investments like those from USAID, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and from cocoa and chocolate companies, form an integral part of the long-term food security calculation.
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