Supply-Side Interventions in Cocoa Production in Ghana: A Regional Decomposition of Technical Efficiency and Technological Gaps

Although Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) promotes technical change in cocoa farming with innovative technologies and input support, crop productivity is better advanced by improving on the efficiency of input use by farmers. This study thereby investigates the technical efficiency of cocoa farmers in Ghana. The study uses cross sectional field data covering Western North, Ashanti, Eastern, Volta and Brong-Ahafo regions of Ghana on a sample of 899 cocoa farmers and adopts Meta frontier stochastic frontier analysis to derive production efficiencies for each region. The findings are that supply-side interventions such as hand pollination, hybrid seedlings, farm pruning and extension services can improve on technical efficiency of cocoa farmers, more especially in Ashanti, Eastern and Western region. Notably, the CODAPEC input support programme which encapsulates insecticides and fungicides spraying has failed to improve on production efficiency as compared to the Hi-Tech (fertilizer application) programme. Eastern region cocoa farmers stand out as the most efficient producers, producing about 87% of their potential output given technology, whereas Western North produces 76% of its output potential, the lowest of the five regions. The three other regions, namely, Brong-Ahafo, Ashanti and Volta can produce on average 83%, 80% and 78% of their output potential in cocoa respectively. Averagely, cocoa growing regions are underutilizing 21.5% of available technology in the industry while losing 36.5% of output potential due to technical inefficiencies.