Abstract
Adoption of the cocoa (Theobroma cacao) production technologies recommended to cocoa farmers by Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana (CRIG) had been low, leading to yield and production levels below potential. To investigate this issue, a formal socio-economic sample survey of 300 cocoa farmers selected randomly, by a multi-stage sampling technique, from all the cocoa growing regions of Ghana was conducted with a structured questionnaire for the individual interviews. The adoption rates of CRIG-recommended technologies such as control of capsids with insecticides, control of black pod disease with fungicides, weed control manually or with herbicides, planting hybrid cocoa varieties and fertilizer application were 10.3%, 7.5%, 3.7%, 44.0% and 33.0%, respectively. Adoption models indicated that credit, number of cocoa farms owned by the farmer, gender, age of the cocoa farm, migration, cocoa farm size, and cocoa yield affected the adoption decisions of cocoa farmers concerning the CRIG-recommended technologies analyzed in this study.
Highlights
Cocoa technology could be defined as the total stock of knowledge including traditional skills necessary for cocoa production, processing and marketing (Laryea, 1981)
The government intervened with national programmes such as the Cocoa Diseases and Pests Control Programme (CODAPEC or mass spraying of cocoa farms) and the Cocoa High Technology Programme (Hi-tech) which provides free inputs and labour for the control of capsids and black pod (CODAPEC), and insecticides, fungicides and fertilizer (Hi-tech) to cocoa farmers on credit
The mean farm size was 3.0 ha, implying that cocoa cultivation is dominated by small-scale farmers who on average had cocoa yield of 317 kg/ha
Summary
Cocoa technology could be defined as the total stock of knowledge including traditional skills necessary for cocoa production, processing and marketing (Laryea, 1981). The government intervened with national programmes such as the Cocoa Diseases and Pests Control Programme (CODAPEC or mass spraying of cocoa farms) and the Cocoa High Technology Programme (Hi-tech) which provides free inputs and labour for the control of capsids and black pod (CODAPEC), and insecticides, fungicides and fertilizer (Hi-tech) to cocoa farmers on credit. This is because the spraying frequency of the CODAPEC programme is inadequate and farmers are expected to do additional sprayings
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