During the quarter, PIND worked with input suppliers/ equipment dealers, off-takers, and service providers to organize training programs for farmers and to set up demonstration farms in cocoa-producing clusters/locations, which reached 3,945 farmers with quality agricultural information, inputs, productivity improvement technologies and quality enhancement technologies, bringing the total number of farmers reached in 2020 to 9,573, a 95% of the 2020 target of 10,000.
Having commenced interventions in the cocoa sector in 2018, PIND conducted the first impact assessment in the cocoa value chain to track changes in the performance of the 4,985 farmers that adopted the improved practices and technologies demonstrated by PIND partners: agro-input suppliers, equipment/technology dealers, and farm service providers in 2019.
Using the 2019 impact assessment result as the multiplier for 2020 under the new PIND estimation framework:
6,716 of the 9,573 farmers reached in 2020 adopted the improved practices taught in the training and demonstration activities. Each adopting farmer increased yield by 16% in the reporting year as a result of quality improvements introduced by PIND and also had an increase of 17% in the average sales price from 663 Naira per kg to 778 Naira per kg in 2020, arising from a global increase in the price of cocoa that began in 2019. This sums to an increased yield and combined income of 1.2 billion Naira recorded by 6,716 farmers cocoa farmers, resulting from participation in the activities of PIND’s supported market actors and surpassing the 2020 target 200 million Naira.
The farmers who adopted improved practices and technologies expanded their production and engaged more labor to tend to increased farm management activities, thereby adding 893 new jobs to the sector in the year, which surpasses the 400 jobs target for 2020.
The adopting farmers also invested a net equity of 593,862,368 Naira and 6,024,000 Naira in additional spending on improved farming processes and technologies respectively, bringing the total investment leveraged into the sector in 2020 to 599,886,368 Naira, which exceeds the 50,000,000 Naira annual target.
Also in the Quarter, PIND in partnership with Subjugate Nigeria Limited, a cocoa bean off-taker commenced a pilot intervention on cocoa bean quality improvement in Ondo State. The intervention, which has about 1,000 farmers being networked into it, follows an incentive-based model that guarantees a 1% to 1.5% premium on each kilogram of good quality cocoa bean produced by the farmers. At a baseline of an average yield of 959kg on 2.25ha per farmer and an average market price of 700 Naira per kg of good quality cocoa bean, this amounts to over 10 million Naira future worth of additional income to the farmers.
