Cocoa is the major foreign exchange earner in Nigeria’s agricultural sector. It became a major produce in the sector in the 1950s with an average of 218 thousand tons over a period of 5 years, 1960 to 1965 (Akinwunmi, 1996). But from 1966-1970, cocoa output in the nation gradually declined,...
When small scale farmers in developing countries secure contracts with large international buyers, they are protecting themselves against certain risks such as short term-price fluctuations and other market uncertainties. However there are certain conditions that must be met to keep all parties...
The cocoa sector in Ghana is one of few examples of an export commodity sector in an African country that has withstood the pressure to fully liberalize. Despite substantial government control over internal and external marketing via the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), the current institutional...
The aim of this paper is to evaluate the impact of collective marketing by FO on cocoa farmer’s price in Cameroun. This evaluation is done through the non-experimental method of impact evaluation which uses the techniques of “Propensity Score Matching”. Results show that collective marketing has...
In Ghana, the liberalization of internal marketing started in 1992 with the introduction of private Licensed Buying Companies (LBCs) as competitors to the state-owned monopoly in buying cocoa from farmers. Thus, Ghana’s state-owned Marketing Board (Cocobod) still controls external marketing....
Interlinked loans intended for the purchase of agrochemicals are an institutional innovation that evolved in Nigeria and southwest Cameroon following cocoa market liberalization. Since liberalization, an estimated $30 million market for fungicides and insecticides has developed. To increase...
The results of a programme to develop a market for organic cocoa in rural Uganda are presented. It is shown that the scheme had a strong and persistent positive welfare effect. The primary mechanism is that of adoption of quality-enhancing methods. The scheme achieved this through an “Exogenous...
The goal of STCP is to improve the economic and social well being of smallholders and the environmental sustainability of tree crop farms. The program was focused on: (1) training farmers in integrated crop and pest management (ICPM), quality management, post-harvest processing, and planting,...
Various works have demonstrated that small-scale agricultural producers from developing countries do not generally obtain the potential gains linked to marketing. What can be done to help them obtain better prices? In this article, we examine two different solutions: (1) increasing the...
This commodity briefing tackles issues of access to markets, finance and services and inputs to improve the livelihoods of cocoa farmers. The growers on the ground receive a meagre portion of the international price of cocoa and they face many challenges: fluctuating prices, ageing and...