Agroforestry as Climate Change Adaptation: cocoa farming in Ghana
A multidisciplinary evidence base for climate-smart cocoa production
Cocoa supports the livelihoods of more than six million smallholder farmers in the humid tropics, and Ghana is the world’s second-largest producer. Yet the crop is highly sensitive to heat and drought, and rising temperatures, shifting rainfall patterns, pests and diseases, and the conversion of cocoa land for other uses are placing the sector under growing strain. Cocoa agroforestry, which combines cocoa with shade trees and food crops, is widely considered one of the most promising adaptation strategies. The open-access book Agroforestry as Climate Change Adaptation: The Case of Cocoa Farming in Ghana (Olwig, Bosselmann and Owusu, eds., Palgrave Macmillan, 2024) brings together more than five years of multidisciplinary research to test how, where, and under what conditions that promise can actually be delivered for smallholder farmers.
The book is the main scientific output of the CLIMCOCOA research project (Climate Smart Cocoa Systems for Ghana), funded by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs through Danida between 2016 and 2021. It draws together researchers from IITA, the University of Copenhagen, the University of Ghana, Roskilde University, CIRAD, and CIFOR-ICRAF, spanning human geography, climatology, ecophysiology, agroforestry, entomology, natural resource economics, and development studies. Published open access, it is freely available to academic, policy, and practitioner audiences worldwide.
IITA’s contribution
IITA is a core partner in the consortium that produced the book, providing the Ghana-grounded scientific leadership on cocoa agroforestry. IITA’s cocoa research portfolio in West and Central Africa spans tree diversification on cocoa farms, shade tree management, soil fertility, and the integration of climate-smart practices into the wider cocoa and chocolate value chain. This long-running body of work, much of it conducted in close partnership with Ghanaian research institutions, the Ghana Cocoa Board, and the wider CGIAR system, underpins the analysis in the book and is reflected in every one of its six chapters, where IITA co-authorship runs throughout.
Earlier IITA-led research provides several of the conceptual foundations that the book builds on. One is the characterisation of cocoa-agroforestry systems as four-dimensional arrangements of plants on the ground, in the canopy, below the soil, and over time, a framing that has become central to how researchers and practitioners design and evaluate shade-tree configurations. Another is the historical analysis of how Ghanaian cocoa was first established as unplanned agroforestry dependent on forest-fallow regimes, which informs current thinking on how to rebuild diverse, resilient cocoa landscapes. Work on cocoa-agroforestry corridors for increasing forest connectivity in fragmented Ghanaian landscapes, and on the synergies between climate-smart agriculture and the cocoa and forestry sectors, further shapes the book’s overall argument.
What the research shows
The research combines historical yield and climate analysis, on-farm studies and controlled ecophysiological experiments, a household survey across twelve cocoa communities, and in-depth focus group discussions. Findings are compared across a climate gradient running from the wetter southern parts of the Ghanaian cocoa belt to the drier north, with communities grouped into three climate impact zones reflecting different levels of current and projected climate suitability for cocoa.
Three messages emerge clearly. First, agroforestry can offer a viable and profitable pathway for adapting cocoa systems to climate change, particularly where shade levels and tree species are matched carefully to local biophysical conditions. The choice of shade tree species, not only the amount of shade, has substantial effects on cocoa yields, soil nutrients, and the incidence of key pests and diseases. Second, the socioeconomic and institutional context is decisive. Farmers’ ability to adopt and sustain cocoa agroforestry depends on land and tree tenure, access to diverse planting material, extension support, household labour, and the competing pressures of alternative livelihoods such as small-scale mining. Women, migrants, and younger farmers are often systematically under-served by current extension and input systems, even though they play a substantial role in cocoa production. Third, because biophysical and socioeconomic conditions vary sharply across short distances, policies and programmes need to move away from one-size-fits-all recommendations toward approaches that are explicitly location- and farmer-specific.