Evaluation of the economics of post harvest processing of cocoa in Cross River state, Nigeria

Abstract

Post harvest cocoa processing is a very crucial aspect of cocoa production as it determines mostly the quality of cocoa beans. This study was conducted to evaluate the economics of post harvest cocoa processing in the study area. From the fourteen cocoa producing Local Government Areas (LGAs) in the state, four LGAs were selected with the aid of stratified random sampling technique. This however represents 28.5% of the total cocoa producing LGA in the state. Simple random sampling technique was used to select fifty respondents and information was collected from the selected respondents with the aid of structured questionnaires.
The result of the descriptive analysis showed that 50% of the farmers in the study area were youths, less than 40 years of age while about 80% of the total respondents had formal education. About 64% of the total respondents have the improved variety of cocoa (Amazon) on their farms. Budgetary analysis however showed that the proportion of total cost of post harvest cocoa processing to the gross revenue derived from cocoa was 11.3%. The Regression analysis revealed that cost of pod breaking, cost of fermentation, cost of drying as well as cost of grading are more critical to the gross revenue than the cost of storage.
Based on the findings, it was recommended that government should assist farmers in providing enough jute bags for cocoa storage and to organize periodic training for the farmers on the appropriate ways of processing cocoa beans so as to be of good quality.
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Journal of Agriculture, Forestry and the Social Sciences Vol. 3 (2) 2005: pp.58-64