RESEARCH NEEDS FOR SUSTAINABLE COCOA PRODUCTION IN GHANA
Education
Research needs:
1. To what extent does education change the perception on project interventions?
2. What should be part of farmer education?
3. What are effective mechanisms for delivering education?
4. How to integrate the local knowledge into education?
5. How can primary and high school education contribute to enhanced appreciation of biodiversity?
Education relates to raising awareness among farmers in order to make them understand the issues that the project will address. When working with farmers to improve the biodiversity value of the landscape, it is incredibly important to get them involved. If they were to reject the project interventions, the project objective would never be achieved. Therefore, it should engage them from the start and use education to create awareness. Scientist know about the benefits of shade trees, but there is limited knowledge on this topic among farmers (Anon., personal communication). There is also a need to develop a tool that allows farmers to see the consequences of the current way of farming (Anon., personal communication) and that there is a potential to increase productivity on a given piece of land to reduce the need for farm expansion (Anon., personal communication).
In short, education is key to create willingness to diversify the farm (Anon., personal communication). This education and awareness raising should go hand in hand with incentives for behaviour change (Anon., personal communication).