A STAKEHOLDER MEETING FOR THE AGRONOMY PLATFORM ON COCOA FLAME ESTABLISHED
On Wednesday, November 24, 2022, a stakeholder meeting was held at Kyekyewere, Offinso in the Atwima Nwabiagya North District of the Ashanti Region to establish an agronomy platform for the “FRAME – COCOA” project being implemented by the CSIR – Soil Research Institute, Kwadaso, and the Faculty of Natural Resources Management, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology.
The CSIR-SRI in collaboration with York Potash Limited, a subsidiary of the Anglo-American Group in the United Kingdom, and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (Faculty for Renewed Natural Resources) pilot the trail on selected cocoa farms to compare the performance of NPK fertilizer to the Poly-4 fertilizer blend, which is being used in this project.
Dr. Kokou Amouzou Kamagate, Regional Agronomist, Crop Nutrients-West Africa, and Program Coordinator-African Tree Crops Systems, said the African Plant Nutrition Institute (APNI-Morocco) establishes the Agronomy Platform with stakeholders to:
- Test Soil Carbon Storage and Soil Health on different Cocoa cropping systems, thus shaded and unshaded cocoa. More Soil Carbon means better soil health, leading to resilient and sustainable cocoa production. He said this would translate into higher yields and cocoa farms being resilient to climate change.
- Site Specification Nutrients / Fertilizer recommendation for sustainable cocoa
production. He explained that applying the right amount of nutrients at the right site would reduce nutrient losses and enhance sustainable and economically viable cocoa production to improve livelihoods.
Dr. Thomas Oberthur -Business and Partnership Development Director at APNI said we have done a lot of research on agriculture in Africa on nutrition. Still, we do not share the results with farmers to improve their livelihoods.
He added we commit APNI to support practical research to support farmers for real-life change in farm management practices.
Dr. Edward Yeboah, CSIR-SRI director, said cocoa soils might require the systematic application of fertilizer to improve and increase yields, hence the need to develop and implement specific soil enhancement management techniques to translate into higher yields to increase farmers’ income.
According to Dr. Yeboah, developing and implementing these management practices that maximize and sustain cocoa yields is a core challenge for the cocoa value chain.
In attendance were partners and stakeholders in the cocoa industry. These included officials from the CSIR–SRI, APNI—Morocco, COCOBOD (CHED/ CRIG), the district department of agriculture, farmers, and the media. The cocoa farm that hosted the meeting was part of an ongoing Poly-4 Crop (cocoa) specific fertilizer project undertaken by the CSIR—SRI and York Potash Limited.