The Wanning Fortunes Of Our Farms; The Disaster Happening In Cocoa Communities

The Global Perspective
Farming is as old as Adam; dating back thousands of years, and its development has been driven and defined by greatly different climates, cultures, and technologies. All farming generally relies on techniques to expand and maintain the lands that are suitable for raising domesticated species in addition to innovations towards increasing productivity.

In the developed world, industrial agriculture based on large-scale monoculture has become the dominant system of modern farming; largely involving intensive and sustained use of agro chemicals such as: fertilizers, pesticides, and other chemicals used in animal husbandry, such as antibiotics and hormones.

The use of agrochemicals has been critical to farm productivity and creating wealth. This paradigm of agro chemical use has over the years caught up with the developing world and hardly any major farming activity is done without the use of agrochemicals.

However, research across the world suggests that some of these chemicals cause substantial environmental and ecological damage, greatly reducing their benefits. Indeed, some of the major changes in the form of chemical usage that drove agriculture in the middle of the 20th century and in the second half of the 20th century are beginning now to be very clear with regards their devastating implications for the environment, health and livelihoods.

In terms of the environment, we are seeing enormous water pollution problems. In fact, agriculture is the single leading cause of water pollution today. There's a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico that's the size of Belize (22,588 sq km) that is connected almost entirely to agricultural runoff from farms. This is a huge piece of evidence of how environmental impacts occur from this kind of farming.

There's also a lot of concern about air pollution that's coming from farming operations nowadays, and there's also substantial evidence linking current agricultural practices to global warming- factored by deforestation and degradation.

On a public health side, the case of overuse of antibiotics is widespread and we are actually seeing a dramatic rise in the incidents of very serious antibiotic-resistant diseases. CNN reports that MRSA (Staphylococcus aureus) caused 278,000 hospitalizations and more than 18,000 deaths in 2005.

Lindane, a pesticide has been in use long enough for a significant body of evidence on its toxic and environmental hazards to have built up. It has caused deaths and poisonings in humans and there is authoritative recognition of its long term health effects including carcinogenicity.

It is a serious environmental contaminant and as well as being directly toxic to wildlife, it bioaccumulates along food chains. A significant body of scientific and anecdotal evidence links lindane with serious health problems including aplastic anaemia, the birth disorder “charge” and breast cancer.

 
The Ghanaian Context
I deem it humbly fit (“de wo fie asem”) to zoom down to my backyard- Ghana, the land of sweet premium cocoa.

In Ghana, agriculture contributes 35% of total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and out of its total land area of 238, 854 square kilometers, only 57% (13,628,000 hectares) is suitable for farming. However, half of this arable land (6,331,000 hectares) is infertile and only productive with intensive management practices employed. Nature Conservation Research Centre (NCRC) a non-governmental organization estimates that 1, 800, 000 hectares is under cocoa cultivation with about 800,000 families in rural communities dependent on it for their livelihoods.

These mostly small-holder local farmers who tilt the land tirelessly under the tropical sun to make a living and build an economy. In the words of Austin (1978) who wrote passionately on Ghana's cocoa industry:

“Ghana grew rich on cocoa. The cocoa industry was the creation of local farmers and their families who responded to the world demand for a new cash crop. There were no plantations and no foreign capital. It was the Ghanaian cocoa farmer who was the rural entrepreneur throughout the southern and central forest country and who made the economy what it was and is”.

Today, Ghana is the second largest producer of cocoa which contributes 28% to agricultural growth. There was an estimated 1, 011,880 tonnes of cocoa purchased in the 2010/11 harvest year. However, there has been a reduction of 13 percent in national cocoa purchases from the 1,011,880 tonnes in 2010/2011 to 879,240 tonnes in 2011/2012 blamed on failed rains (Ghanaweb, 15/02/2013).

There are two elements driving the challenges of farming and in particular cocoa: The first is climate change with its attendant erratic and extreme rainfall pattern and the second is the “progressively” heavy use of agrochemicals which is the focus of this article.

Ghana is facing the menace of agrochemical usage and its related effects. This assertion is against the backdrop of recent revelations of fake agro chemicals in the country reported by Conservation Alliance a non-governmental organization; making the situation even scarier.

In need to increase food supply, the use of crop protection chemicals, organic fertilizers, improved water and soil management as well as increased area of agriculture land seems the simplest way to obtain better yield; but I ask: “Have we handled our need to better and sustain our yield judiciously? And what is the picture on cocoa farms, communities' landscape and livelihoods (considering that 60% of Ghanaians are into farming and mostly in rural areas)?”

Conservation Alliance again reported that some food crop farmers were using chemicals such as Karate, Furadan, Topsin, Dursban and Kocide, some with a tincture of banned substances such as DDT, Lindane and Thiodane, in crop production to meet their expected results.

It has been estimated that more than 50 per cent of crops produced in Ghana in 2008 received heavy doses of agro-chemicals, some of which have been found to take long periods to break down and even leave residues in the environment.

Indeed seven banned or restricted chemical pesticides – aldrin, dieldrin, endosulfan, lindane, DDT, methylbromide and carbofuran (the latter which is banned above a certain level of toxicity), appear to be in use by some Ghanaian farmers. According to the Northern Presbyterian Agricultural Services and Partners (NPASP), pesticides considered dangerous (atrazine, paraquat and chlorpyrifos) that the government has cleared for use and failed to ban are also being used.

At this point it is important to note that pesticides are chemicals designed to kill, reduce or repel insects, weeds, rodents, fungi, and other organisms that can threaten public health and national economies; but in tacit terms they also can kill people!

Water samples from Akumadan, a vegetable farming community in the Ashanti Region and different areas of Ghana revealed the presence of significant levels of pesticide residues. The Volta Lake was also found to be mildly contaminated with lindane, DDT, DDE and endosulfan. Traces of pesticides - chlopyrifos, lindane, endosulfan, lambda-cyhalothrin, and DDT residues have been reported in milk, vegetables, fruits, meat, fish meal and other food on the Ghanaian market.

According to NPASP in a 2012 assessment, "the most comprehensive analysis of pesticide contamination on farmers in Ghana happened in 2008 and found the presence of organochlorine pesticide residues, including DDT, in the breast milk and human blood of vegetable farmers. Some women farmers had accumulated pesticide residues in breast milk above the 'tolerable daily intake' guidelines beyond which they have adverse health effects on their children".

The Natural Resources Institute, UK in 2000, states that analysis of street-vended food samples in Accra, between 1999-2000 revealed disturbing levels of contamination by pesticides, heavy metals, microorganisms and mycotoxins. The pesticide chlorpyrifos was detected in six out of eight samples of waakye (rice and beans) and one out of eight samples of fufu (cassava and plantain dough).

Water samples from rivers in the intensive cocoa growing areas in the Ashanti and Eastern Regions of Ghana have been found to contain the harmful chemical- lindane and endosulfan. The UK-based Working Party on Pesticides Residues (WPPR) reported that "the frequency of lindane residues in continental-style (i.e. high cocoa butter content) chocolate was high”. In fact, the Pesticides News Magazine reported that in 2006, a consignment of 2,000 tonnes of cocoa beans from Ghana was rejected by Japan as a result of excessive levels of pesticide residues found in the beans.

It is reported in Ghana's cocoa growing areas that, pesticides intended for cotton are often being used on food crops – since these are subsidized, access to them is easier. A senior official in the Plant Protection and Regulatory Service (PPRSD) estimates that three fungicides and also some insecticides intended solely for use on cocoa are being widely used on food crops, even though their active ingredients are unsafe for food.

My heart goes foremost to the vulnerable farmer in the rural community who is in the line of fire and is fully exposed to these chemicals- both through direct and residual contacts and effect.

A visit to the cocoa farming communities of the Southwestern part of Bono Ahafo (Asunafo North to be specific) including: Asumura, Akrodie, Kanchiamoah, Nfanti (just to mention but a few) left me very worried and shattered to the core- simply put; the approach and practices of cocoa farming are a threat to our environment and livelihoods.

My interactions within the cocoa landscape indicated that dwindling cocoa yields are a cause for concern to the local farmer. This expression is clearly on the lips of the older generation who have lived on this landscape for decades and seen the declining trends in harvests.

Alongside this, many indigenous and wild growing herbs and foods that were so key and a source of household wellbeing and subsistence are no more on these cocoa landscapes. Mushrooms have become rare and wild foods gone! And the remaining crops poisoned.

In one farmer's words- “even my animals no more eat the cassava leaves from my farm". The local people put this at the door step of agro chemical use and in particular pesticides and weedicides.

The use of weedicides has eliminated the need for intensive labour and has brought the cost of land clearing for farming supposedly to the “barest minimum” hence its use is on the ascendency as we speak.

Food grown alongside the cocoa matrix has always been a very important and major component of the rural food basket; and if the food crops that used to grow within cocoa farms (popular is “cocoa ase bayire”) hardly thrive under the cocoa because of chemical use, what is the implication?:

Local people will no more get enough food for household consumption; they will rely on food crops from non cocoa growing areas where food crops thrive better( even as they may also use chemicals) which will become more costly( mainly driven by transportation costs) and heavy on the family purse.

Farmers will use the little money they get from dwindling cocoa productivity and revenues to buy food. This coupled with the need to invest more chemical inputs provides a gloomy future for our farmers. They will get more marginal and slum towards even further severe poverty.

In fact, the practices I observed employed on cocoa farms can best be described as- “chemicals everywhere”! Many farmers within the cocoa farming communities were oblivious of the fact that toxic chemicals should be stored and separated from their living rooms; they indeed have these chemicals stored under their beds- recall that especially in the rural communities they may share the same room with children.

It virtually means inhalation of poison is a daily routine on end. Indeed they refer to these pesticides and weedicines as poison; but fail to see clearly that without necessarily ingesting them they could still be affected through other means like inhalation and contacts. They were in fact mixing these poisons using the same buckets/containers that they use to bath and fetch water for household use.

In fact, disposed-off chemical containers were being used to store salt and pepper .These communities many of which are inundated with cocoa farms that employ these chemicals intensively were without bore holes; their sources of water are mainly streams and dugouts. These water sources happen to be the destination of chemical run-offs from farms. Their source of life turned into store of poison and death.

Women and men working farms with knapsacks sprayers without any protective gear or clothe was a common sight. Indeed in exuberance some men, who were administering pesticides with Knapsack sprayers, were bare-chested because they did not want their shirts (clothe) dirtied or affected by the chemicals.

We should not be surprised to observe an exponentially unnecessary burden on our health system from otherwise avoidable health crisis, created from this unsustainable status quo of agrochemical use. Just look out for health complications in the cocoa growing areas and fringes in the next decade if this trend persists. We will also observe less productivity of our farmlands, continuous degradation and deforestation of our forests and even worse a loss of livelihoods and surge in social upheavals.

While non-chemical means of managing pests and diseases in the agricultural industry are widely recommended for health and other reasons, the use of some amounts of chemicals in the form of pesticides, fungicides and fertilizers is unavoidable in the effective management of cocoa farms (Opoku et al., 2007; Adjinah and Opoku, 2010). Their use is therefore expected to increase with time. Indeed in the twenty-year period from 1986- 2006, the use of pesticides world-wide increased by almost 250% (UNEP, 1991); although they are difficult to monitor partly because of the secrecy that goes with the continued production and use of banned substances.

Notwithstanding all these accounts, there has always been the potential of deleterious effects of the chemicals used in the cocoa industry since the 60s; yet policy makers know little about the real extent of pesticide poisonings since there are no official figures.

The picture of chemicals and their use as it pertains currently can be appropriately described as gloomy, unsustainable and counterproductive. It is widely accepted that the environmental impact of current farming practices will soon constrain further production expansion in the cocoa industry and will require the strength of a multitude of biblical Sampson to surmount.

I proceed to prophesy:
1. The natural resource base of cocoa farming will suffocate;

2. Cocoa quality and productivity will decline;
3. Many rural dwellers will fall sick and die out of poisoning from chemicals and the national health system will be over burdened with resultant health complications;

4. Many rural farmers will lose productive work days and associated livelihoods;

5. Ghana will be the loser!
Am not an alarmist but hear me out- the linkage of the Ghanaian livelihood to cocoa means that apart from my sympathy for the rural folk on the land farming for a simple living, the cash crop cocoa is too important and big to fail; but to be blunt, this very industry's survival is in the balance if the foundation (rural communities) of cocoa farming crumbles as it seems to be directed.

The Wayforward
The goal of maintaining high levels of agricultural productivity and profitability while reducing or restricting (in particular very toxic and persistent ones) pesticides use presents a significant challenge today. The prolific use of these chemicals hold an omen; it is not a pleasant one at all. Unequivocally, actors need to wake up to the reality on our cocoa farms and landscapes with a collective and sustained approach to save the sinking ship; there too many ignored red flags. In the expected lead and of importance in weight should be our national agencies; most importantly the Ministries of: Food and Agriculture; Environment, Science, Technology and Innovations; Local Government and Rural Development; Lands and Natural Resources; and Health.

I conclude by hinting that there is an innovative module which marries a hierarchal and structured local community governance (elements of organization/mobilization, education and local community empowerment as key/bedrock) with climate smart agriculture (otherwise termed conservation agriculture) to create a paradigm of sustainable cocoa production, environmental protection and improved livelihoods. This we can discuss in my next article. Permit me to add here- “prevention is always better than cure” and “A stitch in time saves nine!”

Martin Yelibora Antunmini,
Conservationist (Nature Conservation Research Centre- Ghana)
0244724890/[email protected]

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