Abstract:
Cocoa production, one of the most important economic activities in the Ashanti Region of Ghana, has for sometime now been bedevilled with several problems. The most important of these is the black pod disease caused by the Phytophthora megakarya strain of fungus, which is destroying pods in large quantities and thus causing substantial financial loss to cocoa farmers. Research has made available a tried and tested control technology whose adoption in the Ashanti Region is very low. This study was, therefore, conducted to specifically evaluate the cocoa fanners’ awareness and perceptions about the black pod disease and the control technology, cost implications of using the technology and the current extent of use. The study used the logit model to examine the factors which influence adoption of the technology. Cocoa farmers showed high degree of awareness about the disease and the recommended technology but perceived the application of the technology to be tedious, costly, and time consuming. The recommended technology was found to contribute 36% of the total cost of cocoa production, which confirmed the perception of the high cost of the technology. The estimated acceptability index was 16%, indicating low extent of adoption of the technology, while extent of use among adopters was 75%. It was found that education, available household labour, extension contacts, and access to credit influence adoption positively; while age, gender, farm size, off-farm income, distance to source of inputs, and input prices negatively affect adoption of the technology. To improve the adoption of the recommended technology, the study recommends that research improves the attributes of the technology and the research-extension-farmer linkage strengthened. More younger and educated farmers should be encouraged to go into cocoa production, and input distribution network should be improved. Reintroduction of the inputs subsidy needs to be revisited; and finally, farmers should be reorganised into cooperatives and associations to improve their ability to access credit. Addressing these policy issues would encourage the farmers to take over the spraying of their farms in place of the mass spraying exercise, which is fraught with problems relating to inputs handling, wider coverage of farms and higher spraying frequencies as recommended by research.
