From Firestone to Michelin, a history of rubber cultivation in a cocoa-growing country: Ghana

Akwasi Owusu Emmanuel, Ruf François. 2015. From Firestone to Michelin, a history of rubber cultivation in a cocoa-growing country: Ghana. In : Economics and ecology of diversification: the case of tropical tree crops. Ruf François (ed.), Schroth Götz (ed.). Dordrecht : Springer-Ed. Quae, 179-224. ISBN 978-94-017-7293-8

Résumé : In Ghana, many cocoa and coconut farmers started to adopt rubber in the 1990s and 2000s. Public policies played a major role in the diversification process. What were the other factors in this success? Combined with a transparent mechanism to fix procurement prices paid to the farmer, world prices have led to a dramatic increase in incomes. Subsequently, since 2012, despite the collapse of the world price of rubber, this mechanism has also proven to be a strong defence against the rapid erosion of the national currency's value. This is not so for cocoa, where farmers deal with a fixed price in Cedis. This helps to explain the strong confidence placed in rubber cultivation in Ghana at the expense of cocoa. Diversification is also viewed as a structural response to decades of monoculture. Regardless of whether it was cocoa or coconut, each region that adopted rubber witnessed the signs of fatigue and wear in these quasi-monoculture systems.

Mots-clés Agrovoc : Hevea brasiliensis, histoire, diversification, choix des espèces, caoutchouc, analyse économique, développement agricole, projet de développement, exploitation agricole familiale, agriculteur, prix, revenu de l'exploitation, rôle des femmes, jeune travailleur, rendement des cultures, Theobroma cacao, Elaeis guineensis, Cocos nucifera

Classification Agris : K10 - Production forestière
B50 - Histoire
E80 - Économie familiale et artisanale
E16 - Économie de la production
E70 - Commerce, commercialisation et distribution

Champ stratégique Cirad : Axe 1 (2014-2018) - Agriculture écologiquement intensive

Auteurs et affiliations

• Akwasi Owusu Emmanuel, GREL (GHA)
• Ruf François, CIRAD-ES-UMR INNOVATION (CIV) ORCID: 0000-0003-4508-1185

Source : Cirad-Agritrop (https://agritrop.cirad.fr/581650/)

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