The Ecological Limits of Poverty Alleviation in an African Forest-Agriculture Landscape

Abstract

Cocoa yields in Ghana remain low. This has variously been attributed to low rates of fertilizer application, pollinator limitation, and particularly dry growing conditions. In this paper we use an African forest-agriculture landscape dominated by cocoa (Theobroma cacao) to develop an ecological production function, allowing us to identify key ecological and management limits acting on cocoa yields simultaneously. These included more consistent application of fertilizers inter-annually, distributing rotting biomass throughout the farm and reducing the incidence of capsid attacks. By relaxing these limits, we estimate plausible increases in yields and, by extension, farm incomes. Our analysis reveals that resulting increases in cocoa yields requiring both ecological and intensive management interventions could be significant (113 ± 60%); however, benefits are disproportionately realized by the wealthiest households. We found that wealthier households benefited proportionally more from ecological intensification methods (e.g., leaving more rotting biomass in their farms) and the poorest households benefited proportionally more from capital-intensive intensification methods (e.g., pesticide and fertilizer applications). We treated poverty as multi-dimensional, and show that only certain dimensions of poverty (school attendance, assets, and food security) are significantly related to cocoa incomes, while several other dimensions (access to clean water, sanitation and electricity, and infant mortality) are not. We explore how increased household cocoa incomes could impact different dimensions of poverty. Our findings suggest, that if all households adopted the optimal level of each of these management options, and in so doing had similar poverty profiles to those households already managing optimally, we would see the community-averaged probability: a child of a household misses school decrease from 47 to 31%, a household would be able to acquire assets increase from 40 to 59% and a household would have access to an adequate amount of food increase from 62 to 79%.

Agricultural Information's Impact on the Adaptive Capacity of Ghana's Smallholder Cocoa Farmers

“…Ghana's low cocoa productivity averages only 400 kg per hectare (Gockowski and Sonwa, 2011;Laven and Boomsma, 2012;Wessel and Quist-Wessel, 2015), which is half that of neighboring Côte d'Ivoire's at 800 kg ha −1 , and a quarter of Malaysia's at 1,800 kg ha −1 (Kongor et al, 2018). Indeed, in some of our same study sites, Morel et al (2019a) recorded smallholder productivity as low as 12 kg ha −1 . Ghana's low cocoa productivity rate may be the result of "inadequate knowledge, " "information asymmetry" (Quarmine et al, 2012: page 10), from inconsistent and inadequate extension services 3 The 11 villages surrounding Assin Fosu town where we interviewed cocoa smallholders were: Homaho, Dadeso, Nysuokye, Assin Bankyease, Kwame Amoabeng, Aboabo, Atentan, Gold Coast Camp, Agave, Ahante, and Assin Nkranfom.…”

“…The 17 villages were selected as part of an on-going study examining the socio-ecological system of smallholder cocoa cultivation in Ghana: ECOLIMITS 5 . The sites were selected because of their proximity to intact forests: a potentially important variable shaping the experience of climate shocks among cocoa farmers (Morel et al, 2019a). All 17 villages are located in Ghana's tropical agro-ecological zone where little old-growth forest remains due to decades of extensive crop cultivation (Norris et al, 2010) and thus decades of less carbon sequestered by forests.…”

“…All 17 villages are located in Ghana's tropical agro-ecological zone where little old-growth forest remains due to decades of extensive crop cultivation (Norris et al, 2010) and thus decades of less carbon sequestered by forests. This deforestation has led to widespread degradation of soil fertility, and when these two factors are combined, the net result is low cocoa productivity (Anglaaere et al, 2011;Morel et al, 2019a). Such low productivity causes livelihood struggles since cocoa sales provide between 70 and 100% (Ntiamoah and Afrane, 2008;Kolavalli and Vigneri, 2011;McKinley et al, 2014;Friedman, 2015;Tsiboe et al, 2016;Bunn et al, 2019a) of annual household income for Ghana's estimated 800,000 smallholder families.…”

Carbon dynamics, net primary productivity and human‐appropriated net primary productivity across a forest–cocoa farm landscape in West Africa

“…Results reported by Morel et al. (in review) found an average fertilizer application of 1.1 ± 0.3 times per year, with 20% of surveyed farmers reporting zero fertilizer applications over the previous 5 years. As a result, nutrient returned through decomposing litter is an important maintainer of soil fertility; however, it has been shown that litterfall decomposition rates were slower in cocoa farms than in secondary forest, potentially suppressing the return of nutrients to the soil (Dawoe, Isaac, & Quashie‐Sam, ).…”

Evaluating the Sustainability Performance of Typical Conventional and Certified Coffee Production Systems in Brazil and Ethiopia Based on Expert Judgements

“…This amount is too low to significantly improve the farmer's socio-economic situation. Thirdly, yields in cash crops in Sub-Saharan Africa remain low (Morel et al, 2019).…”