The global cocoa trade network is highly concentrated. The top 5 producers account for 75 percent of exports. Although recent research shows that agricultural trade was resilient to the 2020 pandemic, cocoa is one of the most affected goods. This paper estimates the effects of international...

Specialization in labor-intensive export crops, such as organic cocoa, can exacerbate gender inequality if production and revenues fall under men's control and the additional labor burden falls on women. However, evidence on the implications for women's empowerment in value chains that combine...

Climate change is intensifying extreme weather events such as droughts and extreme temperatures, threatening agricultural systems. In sub-Saharan Africa, where most farmers rely on rainfed agriculture, the impacts are particularly severe. Agroforestry practices have the potential to provide a...

This study identified the determinants of cocoa farmers' access to credit in Ghana and estimated the impact of credit access on yield, yield gap, gross income, cost of production, and net income using propensity score matching. A total of 384 cocoa-farming households were included in the...

Biodiversity loss is recognised as one of the top risks that humanity is facing. The EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 highlights the need to better integrate biodiversity considerations into decision-making, and commits to the development of methods to measure the environmental footprint of...

The study applied the newly developed Non-linear Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) model by Shin et al. on annual data for Ghana from 1970 to 2019. Evidence of a long-run asymmetric cointegration relationship exists between cashew nuts exports, cocoa beans exports, and economic growth....

The COVID-19 pandemic generated diverse impacts and responses in agricultural value chains worldwide. Cocoa is a key crop for Ecuadorian exports, and the analysis of effects the pandemic had on value chain actors contributes to the understanding of their individual capacities to coping with a...

This paper identifies several governance factors that enable economic upgrading and the link between economic and social upgrading /downgrading of smallholders and Abusa sharecroppers in Ghana's cocoa value chain (GCVC). The findings are based on qualitative interviews and focus group...

This study investigates dishonest behavior among cocoa middlemen in Côte d'Ivoire, focusing on the role of observability and financial penalties in deterring such behavior. Using on a modified version of the "die-under-cup task", we examine the cheating behaviors of 151 cocoa middlemen over...

Voluntary sustainability standards offer potential for sustainable development by improving the livelihoods of smallholder cash crop farmers while conserving biodiversity. However, their overall implications remain poorly understood, as studies have mostly focused on assessing their effects on...

Poverty is a rural phenomenon due to the dominance of subsistence farming in rural communities. This study compares the estimates of unidimensional and multidimensional methodologies to analyse the factors that influence the poverty levels of cocoa farming households predominantly in rural...

This study presents an extensive analysis of the research landscape concerning the application of computational and mathematical techniques in cocoa farming from 2000 to 2020. The methodology comprises a two-stage process: a bibliometric analysis of 1,886 peer-reviewed documents and a...

Ghanaian women play a significant part in the country's agricultural marketing, processing and production, yet the gender information gap is severe. This survey aimed to evaluate women's use of and access to agriculture radio broadcasts in the Ashanti Region’s Tepa district, Ghana. A...

Due to various health issues connected to the use of pesticides, cleaner production is now necessary for the cocoa sector. The health of people is negatively impacted by the residues left in cocoa beans through a variety of active pesticide components, solvents, and other pollutants. Whereas, in...

São Tomé and Príncipe (STP) is one of the world's smallest organic cocoa exporting countries, whose product has a positive socio-cultural and economic impact. Small producers who ensure it, are associated into two cooperatives that experience several difficulties and dilemmas including...

Cocoa farmers in Côte d’Ivoire face precarious livelihoods. Low farm-gate prices that are a fraction of the world market price compel land-extensive farming practices that perpetuate a cycle of poverty and environmental degradation. This paper seeks to understand the drivers of the low...

This study aims at developing econometric models to manage the price risk of Dry and Wet Cocoa beans with the help of ARIMA (Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average) and VAR (Vector Auto Regressive). The monthly price of Cocoa beans is collected for the period starting from April 2009 to March...

Several methods are used to evaluate competitiveness, but the non-inclusion of quality measures, despite their importance in international product markets, gives less credence to such assessments. This study evaluates export competitiveness in the cocoa sector from the context of pesticide...

Cocoa is one of the essential commodities that contribute significantly to the Indonesian economy. As the third largest cocoa-producing country in the world, Indonesia is facing competition from Ghana, a global cocoa-producing country which is relatively similar to Indonesia in terms of...

ABSTRACT CONTEXT Global cocoa production is largely concentrated in West Africa where over 70% of cocoa is produced. Here, cocoa farming is largely a rain-fed, low-input system with low average yields, which are expected to reduce due to climate change. With increasing demand, there is a need to...

Cocoa plantations (Theobroma cacao) are suggested as agroforestry crops that promote biodiversity conservation. Nonetheless, the role of land-use history on the taxonomic and functional diversity of trees remains poorly explored. In this study, we assessed the effect of two management intensity...

In the context of persisting sustainability challenges in the Global Cocoa-Chocolate Chain (GCCC), sustainability certification gained momentum as a major industry response. While much research has been undertaking regarding effects of certification schemes on farming practices and farmers'...

Studies on involuntary pension participation in general and among farmers, in particular, are scanty. Therefore, this paper aims at investigating cocoa farmers' awareness of pension schemes as well as assessing their willingness to participate in a cocoa pension scheme. A sample of 450 cocoa...

Despite the widespread popularity of the Creating Shared Value (CSV) discourse, its ‘business case’ and ‘win-win’ rhetoric remain problematic. This paper adds an inclusive development perspective to the debate, arguing that analysing CSV strategies through an inclusivity lens contributes...

The present paper uses asymmetric cointegration and error-correction modeling where a nonlinear adjustment of the exchange rate yields results that are different than those yielded by linear models. We study cocoa imports for Turkey with advanced ARDL and nonlinear ARDL frameworks. Our findings...

This study assessed the adaptive capacity of smallholder cocoa farmers to climate variability in the Adansi South District of the Ashanti Region, Ghana. The specific objectives were: (i) to assess the perception of the farmers to climate variability; (ii) to determine the perceived effects of...