Growing relationships in the Ghana Cocoa Industry. In the farming industry getting the right fertiliser depends on what you are growing and where you are growing it.

Whilst agronomists can tell you about the soil and the chemicals needed for the particular crops that are being sown there are often large volumes of other practical considerations that need to be taken into account. Cocoa is the chief agricultural export of Ghana and Ghana’s main cash crop. Behind Ivory Coast, Ghana is the second largest cocoa exporter in the world.

In working with a distributor to the Ghanaian cocoa industry, who were looking for an easily importable liquid fertiliser that could be distributed to local growers in manageable volumes whilst at the same time enabling consistent results on the individual farms, we forged a mutually beneficial long term relationship.

Cocoa plays an important role in the economy of Ghana. The cocoa industry employs approximately 800,000 farm families spread over six of the ten regions of Ghana. The crop generates about $2 billion in foreign exchange annually and is a major contributor to Government Revenue and GDP. (www.cocobod.gh)

Gapuma worked with a UK producer of liquid fertiliser and the Ghanaian distributor to ensure that that a specially formulated fertiliser could be approved for use by the Ghana Cocoa Board helping obtain better yields than ‘standard’ fertilisers. The ability to supply the product together with a basis to effectively distribute the fertiliser to the small family growers has meant that Gapuma has helped improve the crop yields of some of the poorest farming families in Ghana.