NURTURING A YOUTHFUL GENERATION OF COCOA FARMERS

Cocoa is Ghana's most valuable traditional crop. It plays a crucial role in generating foreign exchange for the country, and is a key source of government revenues and household incomes. It is Ghana's second largest foreign exchange earner after gold, responsible for more than half of Ghana's total revenue from agricultural export. It injects more than 1.5 Billion US dollars into the economy yearly, and that figure is expected to hit 2 billion US dollars this year. There are about 865,000 Ghanaians working as cocoa farmers in Ghana, but there is believed to be an estimated 2 million working population in Ghana whose employment is hinged on the cocoa pod. So cocoa is a very important commodity. Direct money from the sector have in the past being used in building health facilities in different parts of the country, giving educational scholarships, constructing roads in rural areas, among others. But there are indications cocoa production in the country is under some amount of threat. The business of cocoa production is being left to the aged as a result of rural urban migration and the general lack of interest by young people in cocoa production. Research places the average age of the Ghanaian cocoa farmer above 50 years, a situation that does not auger well for the sector because cocoa productivity according to research has a direct correlation with the age of farmers. Let me quote portions of a recent research commissioned by Cadbury International and conducted by the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness of the University of Ghana and the Institute of Development Studies of the University of Sussex, UK titled: Mapping sustainable production in Ghanaian cocoa. It reads: “The study found that there are significant differences in productivity by age of farmers, with older farmers producing lower yields per acre than younger farmers. Young and more educated persons were found to work on farms that were more productive than those of older farmers, and were more likely to introduce innovative production methods. Many farmers interviewed did not want their children to work in the cocoa sector, and young people with some education were likely to leave cocoa for better paid work elsewhere.” This revelation raises eyebrows. So how can we get more young and educated people encouraged to venture into cocoa production as a sustainable form of employment? Below, I offer some practical suggestions for the action of stakeholders within the cocoa value chain:

In nurturing the next generation of cocoa farmers, a multi faceted approach including sensitization and motivation for young people should be pursued. Government's role in terms of initiating policies that would make it easier for the next generation of cocoa farmers to emerge and have successful careers cannot be over emphasized. Private organizations and other stakeholders interested in ensuring the sustainability of the cocoa industry, including the current generation of cocoa farmers, all have critical roles to play in the nurturing process.

First of all, education on the cocoa sector should be inculcated into the educational curriculum at all of the country's educational levels. This should not be restricted only to the story of how Tetteh Quarshie brought cocoa to Ghana in 1870, but should also include stories of the positive impact that emerging trends like certification schemes and the teaching of good agricultural practices is making in the cocoa sector. Particularly, the practice of cocoa cultivation should be included in the Integrated Science curricula for basic school pupils.

The establishment of cocoa demonstration gardens (demo farms) should also be promoted vigorously in various schools, especially in the urban areas. The farm could serve as the practical ground for the cocoa cultivation aspect of the Integrated Science course as suggested earlier. Even if a whole garden cannot be established, at least in areas where the soil is suitable for cocoa production, a few cocoa trees should be grown on school campuses as a symbol to remind young people that Ghana is cocoa, and cocoa is Ghana. The need then arises that we discourage school authorities from using weeding, and for that matter working on school farms/gardens, as a form of punishment.

The establishment of cocoa clubs in schools should also be encouraged not only at the basic level but also at the Junior and Senior High, as well as university levels. Many are the professionals of today who speak with pride about how clubs they were part of in their school days like Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE), AISEC, Databank Universal Economic School (DUES) Club, shaped their future. Students at the SHS and Tertiary levels are the ripe people for the job market soon after school; hence the need to make them a key target in the sensitization and motivation programs to attract them into the cocoa sector.

It is also important that a conscious effort is made to get young people in school to know the taste of cocoa: the taste of the cocoa not when it is taken raw – which sometimes may taste sour – but when all the necessary additives have been added to it. Cocoa drinks could be served after meals as part of the School Feeding program at the basic school level, and even after meals at the senior high school levels, or during what has now come to be popularly called “Coffee Break.”

A cocoa scholarship can be set up for students studying agriculture at the tertiary level, and beneficiaries made to sign a bond to go into cocoa production after school. Money for the scholarship can be accrued from the contribution of stakeholders along the cocoa value chain. The setting up of the scholarship scheme should come along with the establishment of an agency or a consultancy firm which would support these beneficiaries to go into cocoa production. Make no mistake; the signing of such a bond would not be a breach of the student's rights or anything like that, since this practice is common in the health and other sectors.

All along, the suggestions on the nurturing of the next generation of cocoa farmers have been skewed towards young people in school. And that is to re-state a fundamental truth that is also very commonsensical: the cocoa industry would be far better off with educated minds undertaking cocoa production. But the reality we have today is that our young people in school have their eyes fixed on professions in other sectors like medicine, law, banking, etc, thinking very little of other sectors of employment like farming. And the reasons, include the fact that most of our farms are in the rural areas where basic amenities like electricity, clean water, motorable roads, good entertainment etc are non exsistent. Hence the need for stakeholders to make efforts to ensure the living conditions in the rural areas is bettered.

And to speak of nurturing steps that could be of benefit to both young people in school and those out of school alike, a program along the lines of the Youth in Agric Program should be put together for the cocoa sector. The challenges of land tenure system and access to credit are a reality which would continue to stare in the face of young people wishing to go into cocoa farming. Government and other stakeholders, including COCOBOD, organizations interested in sustaining the cocoa sector and banks can collaborate and put together a “Youth in Cocoa” program through which the various economic factors of cocoa production (land, labour, capital and entrepreneurship), can be made available to young cocoa farmers to undertake cocoa farming. Cocoa farming must begin to move from being a “family tradition thing” – where people become cocoa farmers/owners only after they have inherited the farm from their fathers or uncles, if a more sustainable cocoa industry can be created.

And finally, young cocoa farmer cooperatives should also be established in cocoa growing areas. The idea of cooperative societies is a good thing because there is strength in unity. But we would all agree that the interests of a young person now starting cocoa farming would be very different from that of his octogenarian father who has been in the profession since he became an adolescent. It would be useful to establish cocoa farmer cooperative group for youthful cocoa farmers to help nurture them for a better tomorrow.

But the role of parents in nurturing the next generation of cocoa farmers cannot be lost on us. Cocoa farmers should be seen to be encouraging their children to see the need to take interest in the “profession of their fathers”, so that their legacies are not erased after they have gone.

By Joseph Opoku Gakpo
Student, Faculty of Agriculture, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi – Ghana