Asamankese Cocoa Farmers' Own M&E Report on Orchard Renewal and Hybrid Varieties

hybrid cocoa plant at Asamankese Seedlings Production Unit

Photo by Konstantine Vekua

The Asamankese farmer talking about his experience on how diseases and drought affect hybrid cocoa more than older varieties

Promotion of hybrid cocoa variety and renewal of aged cocoa farms with this variety is one of the corner stones of confectionery industry's and national governments' efforts for the sustainable transformation of cocoa farming. It is described as a solution to reduce deforestation, increase yield per farmer and per 1 size unit of land and ultimately to increase the income of the farmers. You can read annual, impact or progress reports how many new seedlings have been produced and distributed, but:

1. have you read what is the real field performance of this variety?
2. what are adopter farmers opinions and results?
3. is the variety helping to achieve the objectives of reduction of deforestation, higher yields and higher incomes?

I think most of you have not seen answers to these questions. Until now. I am happy to share with you farmers' own evaluation of this variety based on which you can judge what actual contribution hybrid cocoa variety provides to the objectives of improving farmers' incomes and reduction of cocoa system's demand for expansion through deforestation. All the data you will read now is from my quantitative survey of 90 cocoa farmers in Asamankese district of Eastern region of Ghana. 

Let's start. 

Table 1: interviewed farmers

Finding 1: Majority of farmers base their assessment on their own experience/observation of hybrid variety's performance. So they have practical experience about it.

Finding 2: To check/verify answers to first question, farmers were asked if they have already planted hybrid cocoa varieties. Majority of farmers have indeed done so.

Finding 3: Checking how industry's declared advantage of "shorter time to first crop"of hybrid cocoa has indeed been the case with farmers. The result: it varies.

Finding 4: Checking how industry's declared advantage of "higher yield"of hybrid cocoa has indeed been the case with farmers. The result: YES but only 44% of farmers report double yield.

Finding 5: Do farmers trust the quality and true-to-type of seedlings from SPUs

The result:  YES, most of them do.

Finding 6: Higher yield is fine but how much of that higher yield can a farmer keep till harvest time, if diseases hit? Result: NO, hybrid variety is less resistant to diseases than older variety. This will reduce maximum attainable yield.

Finding 7: Again, higher yielding potential is great but, if farmer has a drought, will this potential materialize? Result: NO, hybrid variety will yield less if drought hits farmers, i.e hybrid variety is not Climate-Change proof (unless you irrigate, which is beyond fantasy in West Africa)

Finding 8: What about annual maintenance? Does hybrid variety require farmer to go to the farm and do more works old variety? Result: YES, hybrid variety increases system's demand for more labour and as level of even semi-mechanization is zero all this extra labour is manual. As farmers do not have funds to use only paid labour, some of the labour may be unpaid child labour. Highly Likely.

Finding 9: What about marketability? Can farmers sell all of hybrid cocoa beans at market price? Result: NO, because bean size of hybrids, especially during light crop is smaller than that of old variety so they have to sell them at discount? 

Finding 10: Do farmers have any incentive from the market for adopting hybrid cocoa variety? Result: NO, purchasing clerks do not ask to pack hybrids separately as there is no separate, higher price for hybrid.

Finding 11: Why there is no market price incentive for hybrids? does hybrid cocoa not make chocolate tastier? Result: YES, farmers do think that by producing hybrid cocoa they help to make chocolate tastier but there is no reward for this to them.

Finding 12: Does hybrid cocoa replaces forests or old and dead cocoa trees? Result: 51% of farmers used hybrids to replace old, usually totally unproductive trees but 47% of farmers planted hybrid cocoa on "free lands"

Summary:

What encourages planting hybrids?

What discourages planting hybrid?

Affordable and scale-able innovation for cocoa farmers

4 minute video about the tool:

https://youtu.be/o2LoiYcefdw

What would you say about a new cocoa pod break tool which:

1. breaks the pod and separates beans from unwanted placenta in one intuitive and fluid motion.
2. preconditions beans for proper fermentation - if you are a chocolate company you are assured that no off-taste placentas took part in making your product.
3. by default, totally eliminates one type of manual work from cocoa chain - does it automatically not reduce the child labour and is this not our shared objective?

Many of you have watched Hans Rosling’s TED talk about how adoption of washing machine technology solved hygienic (clean clothes), environmental (river pollution and wood for fire), gender (more freedom for women), educational (mothers now can spend more time to help kids better prepare home-works for school) problems. If in 1950s, there were as many NGOs as now, the fact that millions of women in Europe had to go to riverside, collect wood, set fire and spend half a day to manually wash clothes, would have been considered as a persistent social problem. There would have been documentaries, conferences, awareness campaigns and commitments and pledges to “eradicate it” by 1950, then 1955, 1960 and so on and so on. However, without technology, this problem would have never been solved.

The similarity between child labour, generally hard and long manual labour in cocoa and washing clothes by the river is that awareness campaigns and trainings have long reached maximum of their potential and as we can see it is impossible to see 2020 or even 2025 targets being fulfilled if there is no systemic approach with concept and plan to find, test and adopt labour saving (any kind of labour, be it child or adult), tools and processes.

I have worked in cocoa sector since 2013, starting with quantitative survey of 90 cocoa farmers to build the insights into existing problems and opportunities. Analyses of collected data and the needs of confectionery brands prompted me to choose affordable, sustainability oriented innovations and implementation models as my next focus area. I wanted to find real tools and simpler process flows which would be affordable to cocoa farmers. I would like to share, after initiating and organizing several field trials, how the process of finding new cocoa farm technologies looks like for those who tried it.

Setting Objective/Idea: reduce NN of and duration of manually done works in cocoa post-harvest while lowering the cost and difficultly of the process (farmer’s need) and resulting in better and uniform quality of fermentation (industry’s need).

How: Look at how pod collection, pod breaking, bean-placenta separation, draining, fermentation and drying are done now. Then think:

1. which two tools could be merged into one tool or one process instead of two tools or two processes?
2. can one tool break the pod and the same tool separate beans from placenta?

Who will invent it?

Technology partners: it may seem unlikely but one would be surprised by how many top quality partners can actually be found. For example Stanford University runs the program called Extreme Affordability. What do they do? They look for affordable solutions for the poorest from light to medical equipment to hazelnut de-husker. Cocoa pod breaker Pelle Bongo's first prototype was invented not at some agricultural university but at high tech Stanford campus. The video above is a documentary about first trials of this tool among cocoa farmers. You may notice how happy farmers feel: they see the tool as something from future, from future of cocoa farming.

What is situation now?

Big and smaller confectionery brands have the interest and the need to transform farming but focus has been on training and technical advice on existing practices. for example, training on how to safely handle machete, how not to take kids to pod breaking work, how to separate beans from placenta during a separate stage of work, how to turn beans 2 times during fermentation etc. If farmers really follow these rules, they will need even more labour and these training would unintentionally contribute to higher demand for manpower and higher levels of child labour too.

Instead it is better to give farmers affordable yet innovative tools which will do the job in shorter time and by default reduce system's need for more manual labour.