Cocoa Abrabopa Association, partners tackle poverty
As part of its efforts to help address poverty among cocoa growing communities, farmers and households in the country, Cocoa Abrabopa Association (CAA), a farmer organisation, in partnership with Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co KG, Fuchs & Hoffmann and Ascot Amsterdam, has supported its farmer groups in the Western South Cocoa region with additional livelihood intervention initiatives.
The objective of the support is to enable the cocoa farmers to have an additional income stream aside from cocoa farming.
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The beneficiary farmer groups were drawn from Akotom in the Bogoso Cocoa District, Pieso in the Prestea Cocoa District, Adum Banso in the Tarkwa Cocoa District and Nkurakan in the Ayinese Cocoa District, all in the Western South Region of Ghana.
Target
The alternative livelihood initiatives are targeted at 526 members and their households and will help boost their domestic income from cocoa and other agricultural products through living income interventions.
Other initiatives included planting of shade trees, farmer land registration, supportive child labour monitoring and remediation system (CLMRS) and the farmer business school (FBS) initiatives which were all part of the interventions.
Handover
Speaking at a ceremony to hand over the items to the beneficiary communities, Council Chairman, CAA, Ismaila Pomasi, said many factors accounted for poverty, particularly, among cocoa farmers.
Chief among them, according to him, included location, infrastructure, educational levels, availability of jobs, farm sizes and capital for investment.
“The solutions for increasing the living income are different for each household and the communities they live in, that is why we at Cocoa Abrabopa Association are putting our all in this living income and additional livelihood intervention project as a key module of cocoa sustainability in Ghana.
“Different members have different needs and see different opportunities to turn the tide.
Therefore, cocoa farmers in Akotom in the Bogoso Cocoa District said they needed support to put up an Agro chemical shop in their community as a way of easy accessibility to purchase a product at a very affordable price, so we are doing exactly that for them.”
“Cocoa farmers in Pieso in the Prestea and Adum Banso in the Tarkwa Cocoa District required tricycles for the transportation of their beans from the farm to their homes at a very minimal cost and stress-free, while cocoa farmers in the Nkurakan in the Ayinese Cocoa District desired knowledge in snail rearing, which we have done for them as well.
“CAA is helping contribute to sustainable cocoa production in Ghana and also supporting our farmers and their households in building economically viable and resilient cocoa production which will lead to sustainable improved livelihoods,” he said.
The first groups of beneficiary communities were given tricycles, popularly known as aboboya, an agro chemical shop and snail starter pack, which included snails, boxes and feed as start up for the additional livelihood intervention.
The Sustainability Manager for CAA, Wilfred Apiung, said through the introduction of the module in cocoa growing communities, CAA and its partners were getting to the core of what mattered most to the cocoa farmer.
Appreciation
The leaders of the farmer groups said that the living income initiative project being championed by CAA would help reduce poverty in their communities.
They were grateful to CAA for introducing and teaching them other alternative means of livelihoods as cocoa farmers to boost their income and for being an advocate for their human rights while helping them to mitigate and adapt to the climate crisis.
Present at the handover ceremony were Jonathan Haefiade, Selorm Wordi (Western Regional Manager, CAA); Philips Apalogta (Sustainability Coordinator), Joseph Adu Bosi (Child Development Officer) and some cocoa farmers from the various communities.