Adoption of Some Cocoa Production Technologies by Cocoa Farmers in Ghana

Adoption of the cocoa (Theobroma cacao) production technologies recommended to cocoa farmers by Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana (CRIG) had been low, leading to yield and production levels below potential. To investigate this issue, a formal socio-economic sample survey of 300 cocoa farmers selected randomly, by a multi-stage sampling technique, from all the cocoa growing regions of Ghana was conducted with a structured questionnaire for the individual interviews. The adoption rates of CRIG-recommended technologies such as control of capsids with insecticides, control of black pod disease with fungicides, weed control manually or with herbicides, planting hybrid cocoa varieties and fertilizer application were 10.3%, 7.5%, 3.7%, 44.0% and 33.0%, respectively. Adoption models indicated that credit, number of cocoa farms owned by the farmer, gender, age of the cocoa farm, migration, cocoa farm size, and cocoa yield affected the adoption decisions of cocoa farmers concerning the CRIG-recommended technologies analyzed in this study.