Abstract:
The potential of organic agriculture to contribute to sustainable development in Ghana is unclear. This article
assesses the sustainability performance of organic and conventional cocoa farming systems in Ghana. Data was
collected from 398 organic and conventional cocoa farmers using the SMART-Farm tool. Compared to conventional
cocoa farming systems, we found a higher environmental sustainability performance in organic cocoa
farming systems regarding water withdrawal (+29%), species diversity (+26%), land degradation (+24%),
genetic diversity (+24%) and greenhouse gases (+22%). The organic farming systems performed better
compared to conventional in profitability (+20%) due to market premiums, gender equity (+27%), and verbally
committed to sustainability topics (+25%). Agronomic practices had a strong influence on the observed sustainability
performance, especially the environmental performance. Typical organic cocoa farming system has
small farm sizes, spends more hours weeding manually since chemical weedicides are prohibited and has more
diverse crops. Measures to improve performance is paramount for farming systems sustainability.
