Prospects of Agroforestry as Climate-smart Agricultural Strategy in Cocoa Landscapes: Perspectives of Farmers in Ghana

Albert A. Arhin, Ernestina F. Antoh, Sampson Edusah and Kwaku Obeng-Okah

Sustainable Agriculture Research, 2021, vol. 10, issue 01

Abstract: Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA) is increasingly being promoted by the international community to help farmers adapt to climate change and lift them out of poverty. An essential technique that is promoted under the climatemitigating smart agriculture policy package to reduce forest loss is agroforestry—the planting of woody plants or trees into farming systems. Integrating agroforesty into cocoa landscapes, it is argued, create forest-like habitats which serves as faunal refuges, sequester carbon and therefore contribute to increasing agricultural productivity, resilience (adaptation) and removal of greenhouse gas emissions. This article uses a qualitative data collected from 100 households in seven communities around the Kakum National Park in the Twifo Hemang Lower Denkyira District in Ghana, where a climate-smart agriculture programme is being piloted. The study analysed the extent of willingness of farmers to participate in interventions that promote increased adoption of agroforestry in cocoa landscapes. The result shows that though farmers have favourable perception about the role of agroforestry on cocoa systems, and are willing to adopt the practice, this does not automatically translate into their willingness to participate in agroforestry program that was asking them to extend the number of trees currently maintained on their cocoa landscapes. The study further reveals that size of farms, the age and height of cocoa trees, extension support and the general ecology of the cocoa varieties as some of the reasons influencing whether the agroforestry practices promoted could be adopted or not.

Keywords: Agribusiness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/309796/files/5fdea65a96187.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:ccsesa:309796

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.309796

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Sustainable Agriculture Research from Canadian Center of Science and Education
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().