Research Team : Dr. Elizabeth Asantewaa Obeng, Dr. Reginald Tang Guuroh, Dr. Akwasi Duah-Gyamfi, Dr. Beatrice Darko Obiri and  Dr. Kwame Antwi Oduro.

Donor: US Department of Agriculture (USDA)

Collaborating Institution(s): University of Missouri College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Columbia, Missouri, USA

Status: On-going

The documenting the impact of artisanal illegal small-scale artisanal gold mining and land clearing activities on cocoa cultivation is joint research project between the College of Agriculture Food and Natural Resources, University of Missouri, Columbia, USA and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research-Forestry Research Institute of Ghana (CSIR-FORIG). The three years project dubbed “MU-FORIG galamsey” is financed by the United States Department of Agriculture-Foreign Agriculture Services (USDA-FAS) - USDA-FAS-10961-0700-10.-20-0001. MU-FORIG galamsey project which began in 2020 has two key
objectives:

(1) investigate the impacts of land degradation due to illegal mining and monoculture cocoa cultivation within a first-order watershed, and

(2) evaluate the perception of farmers on the awareness of multiple threats facing the cocoa industry, and rural livelihoods in general.