Publications des agents du Cirad

Cirad

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

Akwasi Owusu E., Ruf F.. 2015. In : Ruf François (ed.), Schroth Götz (ed.). Economics and ecology of diversification: the case of tropical tree crops. Dordrecht : Springer; Ed. Quae, p. 179-224.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-7294-5_8

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 : 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

Chapitre d'ouvrage