Sustainable Management Services Ghana (part of Ecom group), a number of its chocolate manufacturing clients and IDH, The Sustainable Trade Initiative run a large scale sustainability programme in Ghana targeting tens of thousands of cocoa farmers. The programme aims to improve their productivity, profitability and in turn enhance farmer loyalty. All parties expressed a need to gain better insight into farm and farmer performance and an enhanced understanding of the programme’s effects.

To meet the requirements, Agri-Logic is assisting Ecom and its partners to implement the Farmer Field Book. Close to 1,075 farmers across 43 districts keep daily records of all their activities, investments and outputs on their cocoa farms. This information is collected every 2 weeks and digitised in the FFB software. Every year each farmer receives a detailed agronomic and economic profit & loss statement as well as a group report that details the performance of each farmer versus that of his/her peers. Agri-Logic trains Ecom staff on implementation of the FFB and supports the implementation by analysing the collected data at different levels. At company level a sophisticated report is made each year that details the effects of Ecom-provided training and inputs to farmers on e.g. productivity, profitability and loyalty. Data from Ghana is then merged with FFB data from other cocoa-producing countries for meta analysis of the IDH cocoa programme.

Results so far:

• 64 Ecom management and staff trained in FFB implementation
• Same staff trained on farm level data analysis
• 1075 farmers keep records on a daily basis
• Collection of the third year’s data currently on-going