Discussing Old and New Cocoa Fermentation Methods with Farmers

What does science says?

Pods should be broken within 2-3 days after harvest. Germinated, black and diseased beans or pieces of husk and placenta fragments must be removed from the scooped beans. The beans are embedded in sweet, white mucilaginous pulp, which serves as a substrate for fermentation (Picture 1).

Picture 1: broken pod with sugary pulp

Fermentation begins the same day the pods are broken. Raw cocoa has astringent flavour and fermentation should develop chocolate precursors in the beans. The bean itself does not undergo fermentation but the pulp surrounding it. The pulp in undamaged pod is microbially sterile but during breaking, it gets contaminated with microorganisms from pod surface, knife and workers’ hands. Micro-organisms involved are yeasts, lactic acid bacteria and acetobacter. Fermentation occurs in two stages:

Stage 1 (Anaerobic): Occurs within first two days when the pulp does not allow air circulation. Yeast and lactic acid bacteria fermentation begins. Yeast fermentation transforms sugar into alcohol resulting in an increase in temperature. The increase in temperature, in turn, favours growth of lactic acid bacteria which then produce lactic acid. The pulp then breaks down, drains away and air penetrates the beans.

Stage 2 (Aerobic): Occurs from day three and aeration allows growth of acetobacter which transforms alcohol to acetic acid. Temperature increases up to 50°C. Acetic acid penetrates into the beans causing formation of chocolate flavour precursors. At the end the temperature reduces and if prolonged putrefaction bacteria will grow and cause off-flavours and over-fermentation.

What do farmers say?

I had the chance to interview about 40 farmers in two communities of Asamankese district in Eastern Ghana in August 2013. This was a focus group type of interview. Most of them retain pods for 1-4 days. 1 day for the pods cut on last day of harvesting and 4 days for the pods cut during 1st day of harvesting. We are talking about farmers who have 3-4 acres of cocoa farm and need couple of days to cut and collect pods in one or several points for further fermentation.

Most farmers in Ghana, except few hundreds out of almost 1 million, do fermentation in heaps which is fine as long as heap height is not too much and at least 2-3 mixing is done over 6 day fermentation period. Here, farmers and science divide: height of heaps is too high between 1m and almost 1.6m and most farmers mix cocoa beans only once and few do twice.

Why is that a problem? Good quality and uniform fermentation occurs in top 10cm of heap because temperature in this layer is also highest and most even in the heap and when heap height is 100cm, it needs to be mixed at least 3 times over 6 day period. Otherwise there will be too many purple colour beans and chocolate flavour precursors will not develop sufficiently.

In next 4 videos, you can see real field farmers talking about their own fermentation operations. 

Video 1: Farmers share with their 

cocoa pod harvesting experiences

Video 2: Farmers describe their 

pod breaking experience

Video 3: Farmers share with their 

current fermentation method

As we can see from 3rd video, farmers make one heap per 1 acre and some make one heap per 2-3 acres and as they have shown, heap height is very high which should not be ending with desired high quality fermentation.

The main reason why they make less number of heaps is related to labour cost at heap making stage as well as heap mixing stage. More heaps need more labour and more payments to workers. One solution to improve fermentation efficiency and ensure quality cocoa beans is tray fermentation method which by design guarantees that each fermentation process will occur in 10cm high trays and also by its design ensures that it suits farmers interests since NO mixing is needed during tray fermentation at all during 6 days. It will save mixing costs as well as costs of banana and plantain leaves.

On next video, we can see farmers reactions on tray method. They quickly figured out themselves advantages of new method.

Video 4: Farmers provide their 

opinions about tray fermentation method

Tray as well as Box fermentation methods were developed by Cocoa Research Insitute of Ghana many decades ago. At CRIG there is a dedicated facility which is using box and tray fermentation methods. We have been guided by Dr. Asare who explained us how all that was happening. See next videos.

CRIG fermentation tour part 1

CRIG fermentation tour part 2

CRIG fermentation tour part 3

CRIG fermentation tour part 4

CRIG fermentation tour part 5

Case Study: CSSVD Dead Cocoa Trees Replanting and Farmer

Dead Cocoa Trees

During the survey of 90 cocoa farmers in Asamankese district of Eastern Ghana, we learned that every farmer has some dead cocoa trees in his/her farm. On average number of reported dead trees were 300, ranging from couple of dozen up to 3600 trees. 

If we assume that each of 800 000 or so cocoa farmer in Ghana has on average 300 dead trees, it means 240 000 000 dead cocoa trees in total, which do not produce. If we convert these trees into hectares, assuming 1100 trees per 1ha, we will get abt. 218 000 hectares being unproductive and wasted. If we multiply the number of hectares by average productivity of 470kg/ha we will see that abt. 102 000 tons are not being produced for this reason only in Ghana alone. 

Who is doing what?

Cocoa farmers themselves said that they are cutting dead trees and replanting with new plant material but not everyone said so. We noticed that farmers who have more dead trees are more likely to be stuck in indecision due to various reasons such as: ''I have more than 1000 dead trees and wild vegetation has covered them and I need to pay a lot to labour to clear weeds and bushes even before reaching dead trees and I do not have enough money to pay them''

On the other side, Ghana's government subsides CSSVD a dead tree cutting and replanting and provides monetary compensation to affected farmers. The compensation seems to be quite attractive: 553 GHC (276,5US$)  for each Swollen Shoot Affected one hectare and additional 1290 GHC (645US$) for each newly planted one hectare.

However, many farmers still do not actively seek this program and typical answer is: ''if i go there alone, I will not be given attention''. Then they give some examples how they themselves or their neighbours applied for this service but did not get the service. 

What did we do?

Because it was a great opportunity to check how these things work in reality, we decided to take one of the surveyed farmers and visit CSSVD local office and see and hear everything ourselves.

Following 7 videos show each step we had to take for this ''case study'': observing farmer's orchard, visiting office and talking to officers, hearing the story of the other side. It was particularly interesting to see discussion between CSSVD officers and the farmer about obstacles. 

We were told that currently CSSVD program is suspended but will probably renew later this year. We were also told that our particular farmer should visit another CSSVD branch where we had also gone. In the second office they told our farmer that CSSVD program was suspended and renewed in previous year as well. Such suspensions and renewals of course does not contribute to positive perception among farmers.

CSSVD and Cocoa Farmer: Part 1

CSSVD and Cocoa Farmer: Part 2

CSSVD and Cocoa Farmer: Part 3

CSSVD and Cocoa Farmer: Part 4

CSSVD and Cocoa Farmer: Part 5

CSSVD and Cocoa Farmer: Part 6

CSSVD and Cocoa Farmer: Part 7

Conceptual framework and methodology

Research subject: 

Constraints for replanting aged cocoa trees with hybrid varieties

Research Objective

Nestle's impoved strategy for increased replanting of aged

cocoa  cocoa farms with hybrid cocoa varieties

2 Main research questions  

What are farmers’ opinions and experiences about hybrid cocoa varieties?

What factors discourage the renewal aged farms with hybrid cocoa varieties?

Conceptual framework

Improved crop variety is one of components of agricultural technology. During research design stage we came across different concepts but for our research we used the conceptual framework of constraints for adoption of agricultural technologies proposed by Agricultural Technology Adoption Initiative of Jameel Poverty Action Lab (MIT) and Center for Effective Global Action (Berkeley). According to this framework, markets of well-functioning economies capture all costs and benefits and farmers will adopt a new technology but under one or more market inefficiencies, farmers will face constraints to adopt a new technology (Jack, 2011). It defines 7 groups of inefficiencies of following types: 

Some of the examples of the 7 groups of inefficiencies are:

Informational Inefficiencies

    the lack of information about new crop or highly varied opinions about the yields of the new variety and about ease or difficulty of its maintenance; varied or even contradicting opinions between user-farmers and ‘’promoter’’ extension-officers.

Externalities

     some of the positive or negative effects of the adoption that do not accrue to the individual who adopted; In the case of higher yielding variety, spill-over effects can be: increased supply, price reduction, reduction of total farmland needed for cocoa due to intensification.

Input-Output Related

  

     inability to access the plant material and information about it;  if farmers think that adoption of hybrid varieties results in significant benefit only when combined with adoption of fertilizers and other chemicals for which farmers  do not have funds; output market not requiring and offering separate packing and pricing of hybrid and old cocoa varieties.

Land Market Related

     as  replanted cocoa brings first income after 3 years and needs even more time for peak yields, farmers with uncertain tenure security will be most restrained in risky adoption decisions. In sharecropping arrangements, landowners’ unwillingness to deduct the maintenance costs during dormant years.

Labour Related Inefficiencies

    some agricultural innovations that save labour may be adopted by households who lack domestic labour force and are financially restrained to use hired labour. If this is not the case, such households will be constrained in adoption. If farmers think that hybrid cocoa needs more pruning, weeding, spraying than old varieties, then they also realise that hybrid’s adoption will demand more labour inputs from them.

Credit Market Inefficiencies

      due to very long payback time for tree crops, likelihood of ‘’official’’ bank loan is extremely low and would not be even feasible due to high interest rates. If new variety needs more labour and non-labour inputs, farmers, due to high interest rates, may not be able to borrow even for shorter periods such as borrowing in March for fertilizers and paying back in November from cocoa income.

Risk Market Inefficiencies

the new variety may be promising but not certain; The uncertainty can be aggregated by lack of information on whether new variety needs a more intense maintenance and whether it is more susceptible to diseases; Farmers expectation of cocoa beans market price over next 10 years may certainly impact decision on investing into replanting;

Methodology

For survey methodology, we found CIMMYT's ''The Adoption of Agricultural Technology: A Guide for Survey Design'' as very useful. 

To make sure that farmers understood the questions well, we asked questions as simple as possible.  Example:

question in the questionnaire: 

''In terms of resistance to diseases, which variety is more resistant, hybrid or Amazonian?''

the way this question was asked:

''If you leave hybrids and Amazonian parts of your farm not sprayed, which will be more affected by diseases, hybrids or Amazonians?

Total of 90 farmers were interviewed with following criteria:

Prior to quantitative survey, the focus group interview with 4 farmers were conducted to reveal those questions and issues we could not anticipate during desk-study stage.

Total of 76 questions were asked of which 24 were open ended and 52 were multiple choice questions. Although, licensed buying company Armajaro's field manager, extension officer and purchasing clerks were key in arranging farmer meetings, none of them were present during interviewing.

Obtained data were processed in SPSS statistical software.