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Hand pollination exercise and cocoa farmers’ perceived change in livelihood: implications for extension practice in Ghana
Abstract
Using data collected from 384 cocoa farmers through the multi-stage sampling technique, the study assessed the hand pollination exercise and its perceived influence on cocoa farmers’ livelihood. Descriptive and inferential statistics such as frequencies, percentages, means, standard deviation and paired sample t-tests were used to analyse the data. The results show that majority of the cocoa farmers agreed that the hand pollination exercise was a good programme. The adoption of hand pollination significantly improved the production and income of cocoa farmers. Cocoa farmers perceived that their livelihoods had improved as a result of participating in the hand pollination exercise. The highest perceived livelihood change was observed in financial capital. The majority of the cocoa farmers were affected by the lack of rain during hand pollination periods. The study recommends that apart from the financial capital of cocoa farmers, extension agents should expand their efforts to encourage the practice of hand pollination in cocoa in order to improve the other essential livelihood capitals of cocoa farmers.
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References
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DOI: 10.33687/ijae.010.01.4058
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