Sustainable but hungry? Food security outcomes of certification for cocoa and oil palm smallholders in Ghana

Eric Brako Dompreh,Richard Asare,Alexandros Gasparatos

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/abdf88

Abstract

Cocoa and oil palm are the major commodity crops produced in Ghana and livelihood options for hundreds of thousands of rural households. However, their production has negative environmental and socioeconomic impacts. Certification standards have been promoted as a market-led mechanism to ensure their sustainable production. Even though food security does not feature in the theory of change of most certification standards, there are interesting intersections. This paper assesses the food security outcomes of certification adoption among cocoa and oil palm smallholders in Ghana. We analyse 608 household surveys from two study sites using propensity score matching and multiple standardized metrics of food security such as the Food Consumption Score (FCS), the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) and the Coping Strategies Index. Certified cocoa/oil palm farmers are more food secure than uncertified farmers and food crop farmers across most indicators and group comparisons. However, the differences are for most indicators not substantial or statistically significant (except the HFIAS). In fact, 65% and 68% of the certified cocoa and oil palm farmers are vulnerable to food insecurity in terms of the FCS. These results suggest that even though certification adoption can improve the livelihoods and yields of farmers, in reality it has marginal effect on food security. Certification standards would need to emphasize food security in their guidelines, theories of change and support packages to smallholders if they are to enhance food security and have a truly positive effect on the sustainability of cocoa and oil palm production.

Highlights

Rural food insecurity is a major sustainability challenge in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) [1]
Cocoa producers dedicate most of their plots to cocoa they set aside some parts of their farms for food crop production, with cassava (0.2 ha) and plantain (0.05 ha) being the most dominant food crops in terms of allocated area
It is worth noting that certified cocoa farmers do not have significantly better access to extension compared to the other groups, but have significantly better access to credit compared to both uncertified and food crop farmers

Summary

Introduction

Rural food insecurity is a major sustainability challenge in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) [1]. Engagement in the production of such crops can have radically different food security outcomes mediated through different mechanisms depending on the crop, production model and the socioeconomic and environmental context [7]. Concurrent to the expansion of non-food commercial crops in SSA (and other parts of the world) strong efforts have sought to increase the sustainability of their production [8]. Certification standards is one of the most prominent of such efforts and entails the adoption of environmentally and socially responsible production practices to improve the sustainability of production [9,10,11]. Sustainability standards have targeted most non-food commercial crops in SSA including cocoa, coffee, oil palm, sugarcane and cotton [12, 13]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion