University of Twente Student Theses
Global Trade and Local Food Security: Mapping and Monitoring Cocoa Expansion and its Impact on Household Food Security in the Bia West Disctrict, Ghana
Batame, Michael (2023) Global Trade and Local Food Security: Mapping and Monitoring Cocoa Expansion and its Impact on Household Food Security in the Bia West Disctrict, Ghana.
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| Abstract: | The expansion of cocoa has become a threat to local food security and forest conservation in the cocoa-growing regions, especially in Ghana. Many reasons motivate farmers to engage in cocoa expansion, such as the desire to increase their household income, gain social status, ready market for cocoa beans, the profitable nature of the cocoa industry, and the attractiveness of government incentives towards cocoa farming. Nevertheless, discussions about cocoa research have dominated the literature and many international discussion forums. Yet, the research has not given much thought to cocoa expansion landuse types, its effects on household food diversity, and its associated variables. The study downloaded Landsat images (1999, 2017, and 2022) and Sentinel 1 (SAR) images (2017 and 2022) and used them as input for a random forest machine learning model to perform the LULC classification. 200 household surveys were collected from 7 communities using a multi-sampling technique, which assessed household food security and its associated variables among the cocoa household heads in the study area. Ordinal logistic regression was employed to model the household and land use variables affecting the household food security of cocoa households. The findings of this study revealed that cropland decreased from 1.86% to 0.93%, monoculture cocoa decreased from 40.1% to 31.8%, and agroforestry cocoa increased from 5.4% to 23.9% between 1999 and 2022. Through this study, it was discovered that among the households, 63% of the agroforestry cocoa households and 77% of the monoculture cocoa households had high and low dietary diversity status, respectively. This finding implies that monoculture cocoa households are food insecure, whilst agroforestry cocoa households are food secure. The top three most consumed food groups in monoculture cocoa households were roots/tubers (95.8%), vegetables (89.1%), oil/fat/butter (47.9%), whereas agroforestry cocoa households had vegetables (97.5%), roots/tubers (96.3%), local grains (95.1%) as their top three widely eaten food groups. Furthermore, only legumes (27.2%) food group was least consumed in agroforestry cocoa households, but fruits (12.6%), organic meat (12.6%), and milk product (2.5%) were the three least consumed food groups in monoculture cocoa households. In addition, 86.6% of the monoculture cocoa households indicated decreasing food production, whereas 70.4% of the agroforestry cocoa households noted increasing food production. Furthermore, only 9 out of the 15 investigated variables were key determinants of household dietary diversity status, namely, sex (p < 0.005), education (p < 0.0912), access to extension officers (p < 0.0973), age (p < 0.0012), dependency ratio (p < 0.0386), cocoa farming experience (p < 0.000), general food production trends (p < 0.081), agroforestry households (p < 0.0001), and food crop farming (p < 0.0000). The study recommends that the cocoa households in the study area should be educated on the importance of consuming fruits, legumes, eggs, and milk products since they are rich in vitamins and protein. Government initiatives should be designed to reduce the rate of cocoa expansion in forest zones and inspire farmers to balance the production of food crops and cocoa. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Faculty: | ITC: Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation |
| Subject: | 43 environmental science, 48 agricultural science, 74 (human) geography, cartography, town and country planning, demography |
| Programme: | Geoinformation Science and Earth Observation MSc (75014) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/97349 |
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