Tree registration encourages farmers to keep shade trees on their farm

Shade tree registration contributes to farmer productivity

For farmers, having shade trees registered means more freedom to take care of their farm

• Shade trees improve productivity
  Crops like cocoa need 30-40% canopy shade to give good yields

• Diversify income sources
  Planting new trees provides opportunities to diversify with income from timber or fruit trees or even serve as a pension

• Adapt to climate change threats
  Preserving trees helps to maintain soil quality and prevent erosion

• Protection against uninvited logging
  With tree registration, logging companies cannot cut trees on a farmer’s land without permission

“Timber contractors come to our farms saying they have been given the authority to fell a timber tree in our farms. The felling process destroys our crops, but we get next to nothing in compensation.”

James Koduah Amoah
Cocoa farmer from Ashanti Akim South, Ghana

For food brands or traders, investing in tree registration means

• Living up to CFI and REDD+ commitments
  Tree registration is part of the agroforestry requirements to meet Cocoa & Forests Initiative (CFI) and REDD+ objectives

• Upscaling of agroforestry programs

  With shade trees getting registered formally, farmers have the assurance that the trees they plant will not be logged without their consent. This greatly increases the farmers’ incentive to plant and nurture shade tree seedlings

• Enable carbon payment schemes
  The shade tree data we collect enables accurate calculation of the biomass and carbon stock of the farm and planning for the future. That, in turn, allows carbon payment schemes to come in place

Accessible Soils and Sustainable Environments (ASASE) - climate-smart cocoa agroforestry in Ghana

Tackling land and tree tenure issues to boost climate-smart cocoa agroforestry in Ghana.

ASASE is a four-year public-private partnership project implemented by ETG-Beyond Beans, Meridia, Tropenbos Ghana and the Ghanaian Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources and funded by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO).

Sensitization and fine-tuning to local circumstances

Data collection and validation

Data delivery

Sensitization and fine-tuning

We start by educating farmers on the process and benefits of registering the shade trees on their farms.

Our in-house technology gets adapted to the local circumstances. We often employ and train community people to ensure the management of local sensitivities and appropriate data collection. For mapping in sensitive areas, such as protected forests and buffer zones, we partner with reputable local NGOs, traditional authorities, opinion leaders and the relevant government agents to mitigate risks during the activity.

Data collection and validation

Combining land titling or mapping and tree registration

Bundling land tenure with shade tree registration has a cost-efficiency benefit. Our field agents collect all the necessary spatial and attribute data for both processes in one go.

Field teams collect the data

Our field teams capture all the necessary shade tree data for each farm. Field agents record the geo-coordinates, species, origin (whether planted or naturally occurring) and age of every individual shade tree on the farms. Teams are geared with mobile devices designed for fast and high-quality data collection.

Data cleaning and validation

We post-process, clean and verify all data and generate registration forms. These forms are shared with relevant authorities for audit and validation, which can be done remotely on our platform or manually. For example, in Ghana, the Forestry Commission holds the legal authority to register the submission in its databases.

Data and document delivery

Finally, we deliver tree documentation to the local smallholders. These are shade tree registration forms, fully signed and stamped by the Forestry Authorities. As an extra option, we can deliver a Farm Profile with data on the farm and the location of the trees. We also provide a high-quality dataset and digital map tailored to our client’s needs.

Ghana Forestry Commission

In Ghana, the Forestry Commission is the only institution with the legal authority to register shade, hardwood timber and fruit trees. The Forestry Commission has laid out the details on collecting and processing the data required in an operations manual, a process to which we have contributed based on the experience of the pilots we executed. We are grateful for working in close collaboration with and under their guidance.

Agro Eco Louis Bolk Institute

For the execution of tree registration projects, we work closely together with the Agro Eco Louis Bolk Institute. In the past 25 years, Agro Eco has worked throughout Africa in developing certified value chains of all kinds of commodities. In Ghana, Agro Eco has managed and implemented over ten major sustainable cocoa projects, focusing on biodiversity, gender, livelihood improvement, research and knowledge.

Other partners