Integrated Soil Fertility Management in Ghana: understanding cocoa farmers’ decisions and practices

Abstract
Cocoa is an important crop for the livelihoods of many Ghanaian smallholder farmers. The yields per
hectare remain very low, with soil nutrient deficiency as one of the major causes. Integrated Soil
Fertility Management (ISFM) has the potential to increase cocoa productivity, however, low adoption
rates of ISFM practices indicate a room for improvement in matching available technology with the
needs of farmers. Therefore, forty cocoa farmers were interviewed to understand their motivations to
grow cocoa and decisions regarding ISFM practices. The concept of technology adoption was unpacked
into different ‘utilisation stages’, providing insight in incentives and constraints of farmers to perform
ISFM practices. The assessed practices were application of inorganic fertiliser, organic fertiliser, cocoa
husk spreading, land preparation and choice of variety.
This study found motivations for growing cocoa in three categories: ‘passionate’, ‘practical’ and ‘lack
of alternative’. All farmers with ‘passionate’ motivations had higher ISFM utilisation scores than
farmers with ‘lack of alternative’ motivations. This suggests that motivation is a driver for ISFM
utilisation behaviour. Furthermore, farmers showed very diverse stages of utilisation of the ISFM
practices researched in this study, as well as diverse incentives and constraints to use them. A typology
based on motivations and ISFM utilisation was constructed to highlight this diversity. Five types of
farmers were distinguished: ‘passionate’, ‘high potentials’, ‘practical’, ‘stuck’ and ‘tired’.
It is important to acknowledge this diversity between cocoa farmers in targeting and implementing
new technologies, and to take potential constraints and incentives into account. This will help improve
self-selection of practices and therefore improve utilisation of ISFM and cocoa yields.