The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), Mr Joseph Boahen Aidoo, said the CocoaSoils programme will help farmers to adopt best practices to improve crop yield.
The initiative, which will offer cocoa producers information on integrated soil fertility management, will increase cocoa yield by improving agricultural fertility and preventing deforestation.
Farmers would be educated on the need for nutrient delivery via fertilizer application, as well as the need to employ proper agricultural techniques in order to maximize productivity and profitability.
Ghana produced a new high of 1.033 million tonnes of cocoa beans in the 2020/2021 season, surpassing the previous high of 1.024 million tonnes set in 2010/2011.
Mr Aidoo said the adoption of the principles in the document will help farmers overcome obstacles in soil fertility management and augment the Board’s work with farmers during a program to give a training manual to COCOBOD in Accra.
Farmers’ cocoa yields have been declining for years, according to Mr Aidoo, due to methods like slash and burn, which have resulted in soil depletion and deterioration of the land and environment.
“We regard this initiative as very important to the cocoa business because it will help us understand the suitable and proper ways of managing our soils to the best of the sector’s benefit, as well as bring about the industry’s sustainability,” he said.
“This is critical for us in cocoa because soils are the base of everything we do in production – soil management, water filtering, toxin discharge as well as providing the necessary nutrients for the plants.”
Dr Richard Asare, the CocoaSoils Project Coordinator, said the manual would provide cocoa farmers with scientific and practical insight into the best soil and farm management approaches.
Farmers would obtain a better grasp of the nutritional requirements of cocoa trees and handle the issues of expanding farming into forested regions through training, he said.
Farmers and policymakers would benefit from a better understanding of the soils, which would help them increase revenue, increase sustainable cocoa production, and reduce the risk of deforestation in the country.
“Managing soils for enhanced productivity and decreased deforestation in cocoa: A training handbook for field officers” is the title of the manual, which is divided into three sections containing technical and practical information.
This included an overview of enhancing cocoa yield and reducing deforestation, as well as effective agricultural techniques for increasing productivity and managing soil fertility.
It was created to disseminate up-to-date knowledge and know-how, as well as the skills needed to facilitate dialogue between cocoa growers and field officers.
The Partnership for Delivery (P4D) Committees in Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria assessed it to verify that the information was relevant and that the language was not too technical for the farmers.