Farmer Field Book (FFB): a standard tool for monitoring agronomic and water management practices and productivity in cocoa farming systems

This report presents the development and prospective institutionalization of an integrated data collection tool, the Farmer Field Book (FFB), created to standardize agronomic monitoring across Ghana’s cocoa farming systems. Among persistent challenges such as low yields, climate variability, and inconsistent data availability, these instruments address critical data gaps by enabling systematic tracking of household information, irrigation practices, rainfed farm practices, and cocoa tree-level growth. Through its structured and consistent format, the tool supports evidence-based decision-making aimed at improving productivity, sustainability, and resilience within a sector largely driven by smallholder farmers.

The FFB serves as a comprehensive record-keeping mechanism, capturing essential elements across the cocoa production cycle. It includes farmer profiles, general seasonal information, plot details like GPS coordinates and planting density, irrigation practices, fertilizer and pesticide applications, labor inputs disaggregated by gender, agronomic activities such as pruning and weeding, growth stages, stress indicators, harvest data, and sales revenues. Tailored versions for irrigated and non-irrigated systems ensure adaptability while preserving comparability. By aligning with global key performance indicators (KPIs) from previous initiatives of CGIAR’s Excellence in Agronomy and current sustainable farming science program, the FFB transforms farm-level observations into measurable outcomes, including yield stability, nutrient-use efficiency, profitability, and soil health.

Ultimately, institutionalizing these tools within organizations such as COCOBOD could build a scalable agricultural data infrastructure, promoting sectoral growth and alignment with global sustainability goals. Their adoption promises not only immediate gains in farm-level decision-making but also broader contributions to resilient cocoa value chains, urging stakeholders to prioritize training, digital integration, and cross-institutional collaboration for widespread implementation.

This report complements the CocoaSoils Core Trial and Satellite Trial Implementation Protocols (2020). While those manuals guide the experimental design and field procedures, the Farmer Field Book (FFB) serves as a standardized monitoring and data integration framework. It focuses on the collection, management, and analysis of agronomic and socio-economic indicators, transforming raw field data into performance metrics aligned with CGIAR’s Excellence in Agronomy and sustainable farming program KPIs.

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