Abstract

In West Africa agriculture including cocoa farming is by far the largest employer of people as most of the food produced comes from the farms and fields of smallholders. However, the continent suffers shortages of food mainly arising from low production, lack of proper storage and a weak supply chain, and economic systems in fundamental ways. This is especially the case in the face of climate change, deforestation and land degradation that threaten cocoa farming, agriculture in general and the regulation and provision of critical ecosystem services. This way of working includes many features from the Green Revolution of the 1960s. First launched in Mexico and the Indian sub-continent, these techniques later expanded to Africa. We therefore need a big rethink of the traditional approaches to cocoa production. This needs to consider the health of the planet and the fact that Green Revolution farming techniques are simply too complex and costly for many small farmers. In addition, cocoa farmers need to diversify into other crops. There is a need to adapt the Green Revolution to the local conditions of cocoa famers and consider ecological, social, and economic conditions. We here present a new concept and methods to revive the cocoa sector called resilient productivity that covers agroforestry and ago-ecological intensification, diversity of species, lifeforms, livelihoods, value chains, and systems. The concept implies a genuine option by context model of responsible cocoa production based on implications for overall food production, livelihoods, resilience, and development.

Keywords: Cocoa agroforestry system, Biodiversity conservation, Food production, Resilient productivity, Livelihoods, Sustainable development