Socio-Economic Impact of a Cocoa Integrated Crop and Pest Management Diffusion Knowledge Through a Farmer Field School Approach in Southern Cameroon

We focused on the Socio-Economic Evaluation of Farmer Field School Training on Integrated Pest Management in the humid forest region of Cameroon. The main objective was to assess the impact of training on integrated pest management (IPM) on cocoa farmer field school graduates. The results indicate that shade management, phytosanitary harvest, pruning, improved spraying practices and grafting of improved materials were adopted at the rate of 94, 93, 90, 66 and 35 % respectively, with the overall rate of adoption being 76 %. There was a 47 % reduction in the frequency of spraying fungicides and a 17 % reduction in the number of sprayers applied per treatment following the implementation of the training. Labour inputs increased significantly for pruning, phytosanitary harvest, and shade management but decreased for spraying. A partial budget analysis reveals that the IPM practices lowered overall costs of production by 11 % relative to previous practices. The poster presenting the synthesis of this work comprises a general introduction, a methodology and study area map, results and discussion which comprise two photographs of farmer field school activities, a graph and a table of different technical results, a short conclusion and recommendation.