Ghana – Supporting Deforestation-Free Cocoa in Ghana (SDFC)

This research project is a quasi-experimental endline impact evaluation for USAID’s Supporting Deforestation-Free Cocoa in Ghana (SDFC). The Supporting Deforestation-Free Cocoa in Ghana (SDFC) project was implemented from 2018 to 2022 in the Western Region of Ghana by an international consortium including the prime contractor, Tetra Tech, and core subcontractors, including Winrock, and three private sector partners, Meridia, The Hershey Company, and ECOM AgroIndustrial.

The SDFC project had four intervention components: (1) cocoa farm rehabilitation led by ECOM that was provided to a small group of registered farmers; (2) farm mapping and provisioning of tenure documentation to all interested farmers in the four communities led by Meridia; (3) landscape governance and land-use planning activities implemented at village and district levels led by Tetra Tech and Winrock; and (4) PES incentive payments from Hershey in the form of cash to farmers to increase tree survival rates led by Hershey and Winrock. Outcomes sought were: reduced deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions and increased carbon sequestration in the cocoa landscape, increased cocoa farm productivity and resilience, diversified farmer incomes, reduced inter-farmer and intra-community conflict, and improved farmer livelihoods. This project is supported by a number of PDRI-DevLab Research Fellows.