14 The role of rural and community banks (RCBs) has been laudable in promoting sustainable cocoa farming 15 throughout rural communities in Ghana. Through liquidity mobilization and the ultimate provision of 16 institutional credit to farmers for various agricultural related activities, RCBs could trigger increased 17 revenue and agricultural sustainability. However, pragmatic evidence on this assertion is inadequate and 18 no study has acknowledged the supporting conditions required for RCBs

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... tervention to improve cocoa 19 production in the agricultural sector. In a three-stage sampling procedure, a cross-sectional data from 500 20 cocoa farmers were used to evaluate the role of RCBs intervention in improving farmers' sustenance and 21 technical efficiency. In this study, the Heckman's treatment effect model and stochastic frontier analysis 22 (SFA) were applied to study cocoa farmers' production efficiency. Empirical results from the study 23 indicated that the financial support received from RCBs has a significant and positive effect on farmers' 24 technical efficiency. Although accessibility to RCBs credit is constrained by a myriad of conditions, the 25 overall technical efficiency of farmers was 0.81 (81%) suggesting that no farmer reached the cocoa 26 production possibility frontier of 1 (100%). However, the mean efficiency gap between credit takers and 27 non-credit takers is 0.09 (9%) confirming the positive impact of credit on farmers' efficiency. Relating the 28 agricultural growth indicators such as cocoa output and income to efficiency, close observation revealed 29 that increasing farmers' accessibility to credit can close the efficiency gap between farmers and its 30 subsequent reduction in the severity of poverty and extreme poverty. Although the sector is bedeviled by 31 pests and diseases, lack of finance, and uncertain weather conditions, the inefficiency model indicated 32 that education, membership of FBO, experience, credit access, and participation in government-sponsored 33 mass spraying program had a significant and positive impact on efficiency scores. Therefore, we 34 recommend policy directed at making institutional credit from rural and community banks easily 35 accessible to all categories of cocoa farmers. 36