Cash-Co Farming: Farmer innovation for lifting cocoa production

Ghana’s cocoa production decline has become topical in recent years.

From realising over a million tonnes in 2020/2021, 600,000 tonnes seem beyond reach for the 2024/2025 season.

Several factors contribute to the decline, including the cocoa swollen shoot virus disease, the black pod disease, illegal mining on cocoa farms and climate change.

Amidst concerns about the decline and its risks to Ghana’s economy, stakeholders appear inattentive to an emergent innovation that accentuates the ingenuity and resilience of Ghanaian farmers, especially in the Bono East Region.

Cash-Co farming

The innovation concerns farmers successfully integrating cocoa into cashew farms in areas written off as unsuitable for cocoa production. I’ll refer to this ingenious land use as Cash-Co Farming, shorthand for Cashew-Cocoa Agroforestry.

Droughts and wildfires are characteristic of Ghana’s Transitional Zone. Both phenomena are exacerbated by forest decline and mounting climate impacts. This partly explains the decline of cocoa production in the region, following the 1983 wildfires that ravaged Ghana.

The Ghanaian cocoa farmer has since become infamous for destroying forests southwest of the country to produce cocoa.

Cashew production has taken off in considerably drier parts of Ghana over the last decade. Many have cautioned about how cashews are displacing food production in, for example, the Bono East, Ghana’s food basket.

Hardly anyone could have imagined it would lay a foundation for the return of cocoa to the region. Several modelling studies on cocoa production suggest that areas north of Ashanti will be unsuitable for cocoa by 2030.

It appears, however, that Cash-Co farmers are poised to prove their authors wrong.

Cocoa is native to the Amazon. It thrives best in moist climates with good rainfall and shade. Cocoa is susceptible to droughts and fire. In contrast, cashews are drought tolerant.

They grow well in Ghana’s transitional area, the belt between the forest and savannah zones.

Recognising this, “I started growing cashews on my marginal land. Shade from the cashew and the litter fall improved the soil nutrients and moisture over time. I incorporated cocoa underneath the cashew,” averred Charles, an emergent Cash-Co farmer.

Charles also has four beehives on the boundaries of his Cash-Co farm. He most recently harvested one “Kuffour Gallon”, estimated at GH¢1,200.

The hives, he pointed out, were offered to him by a team implementing an EU-funded intervention, the Landscape and Environmental and Agility across the Nation (LEAN) project. The LEAN project, he argues, does not promote Cash-Co farming directly.

Instead, they “train farmers on annual wildfire management, tree planting and additional livelihood development such as goat and pig rearing, fish farming, beekeeping and snail farming.”

Charles is not alone. Several farmers in the Bono East Region are gradually planting cocoa in their cashew understorey. Beatrice, who first adopted Cash-Co farming in 2018, believes it improved her farm’s productivity and diversified her income: “Cashew and cocoa are complementary with good pruning. Earning from both is a game-changer.”

Enablers

Cash-Co’s emergence in Ghana is no accident. In contrast, it highlights at least two issues. Firstly, it demonstrates the ingenuity of our farmers.

Many scholars are dismissive of cultivating cocoa in Ghana’s transitional area. The burgeoning of Cash-Co farming contends this view, accentuating the need for science to be driven by the lived, felt experiences of the grassroots, especially if feasible and equitable solutions are to be co-developed.

Secondly, Cash-Co farming appears to benefit from the efforts of various stakeholders. This includes farmers, NGOs, donors and government agencies. Despite acting on different projects, these actors have nurtured positive synergies.

More investment is required to deepen such collaborations. For example, the Tree Crops Development Authority, COCOBOD, MoFA and development partners can accelerate Cash-Co farming by building local knowledge hubs and targeted extension services to accelerate knowledge and technology transfer among farmers.

Participatory action research to understand the economics and socio-environmental dimensions of Cash-Co farming could help refine the innovation further.

Cash-Co farming could rejuvenate Ghana’s cocoa sector and improve farmers’ and national well-being. Stakeholders must work together to support farmers in honing this innovation.

The writer is a Researcher, Land, Society & Governance Group, Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery, University of Oxford, UK; Partnership for Agriculture, Conservation & Transformation (PACT), Ghana.