Experts urge farmers to plant Cocoa, increase earnings

Experts have urged Ghanaian farmers to plant cocoa on the same piece of land with other crops to boost production and increase income generation for farmers at a ten per cent rate.

They also said that it is associated with a 1.6 per cent decrease in the cost of producing cocoa. Reports AllAfrica.

These were contained in a study by researchers from the University of Queensland in Australia after examination of 300 Ghanaian Cocoa farmers.

“Planting cocoa with other crops on the same land produces more cocoa per hectare than plots with only cocoa,” said John Asafu-Adjaye, a co-author of the study.

A consultant for the Sustainable Tree Crops Programme, Mr. Victor Afara-Sefa, noted that biodiversity conservation is also a beneficiary in inter-cropping of cocoa with other crops.

"Not all tree species are likely to be equally beneficial to cocoa farmer," Afara-Sefa, a Consultant for the Sustainable Tree Crops Program, under the management of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Nigeria said. Read more

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