OPOKU GAKPO WRITES: THE BLEAK FUTURE OF OUR COCOA INDUSTRY

I will begin by saying a loud shout of congratulations to the thousands of cocoa farmers across Ghana, as we join the rest of the world to celebrate Cocoa Day today. It's not lost on us, the fact that you remain one of the most hardworking, but unfairly rewarded group of 'professionals'. Who still passionately produce the 'golden pod' which is helping keep the soul of our nation and the spine of our economy alive; providing jobs, healthcare, education and infrastructural development to millions of people.

October 1 has been celebrated since 2006 by the Cocoa Producers Alliance (COPAL) – an organisation of cocoa producing countries, to create awareness about the cocoa industry. And as we celebrate this day, I want to share a few 'cocoa' notes I have been taking since 2010, when I first had the opportunity to visit a cocoa growing community to interact with farmers there. It's sad to acknowledge that the notes have more bad news than good news. Something typical of a lot of the rural communities you find in Ghana, but worse in the cocoa growing communities.

I spent almost three years of the duration I was schooling for my first degree at the KNUST Agric Faculty, volunteering as a Cocoa Ambassador with the Cadbury Cocoa Partnership (now Cocoa Life Programme), on a project that seeks to encourage more young people to venture into cocoa production as a sustainable form of employment. That's when I started taking the notes, each time I visited cocoa communities in the Western, Eastern, and Ashanti regions. That journey ended in early 2013. After more than one year, I took another trip to some cocoa communities in the Atwima Nwabiagya District of the Ashanti Region in August 2014. Only to realize the stories have not changed. So I decided to publish my 'cocoa' notes; a summary of the challenges facing cocoa farmers I have listened to them complain about. Which convinces me COCOBOD has largely remained an impoverishing tool, hanged around the neck of cocoa farmers, than an agency that is making their lives better.

1) Poor prices of cocoa produce: Compared to their colleagues in other cocoa growing countries, Ghanaian farmers do not get the full benefit for their seeds. One tonne of cocoa on the world market sells averagely around 3000 US Dollars. This translates into almost 10,000 cedis currently. But in Ghana, farmers are paid an average of about 3,200 cedis for each tonne of cocoa. The rest of the difference goes to government and COCOBOD, which remains one of the most wasteful and inefficient public agencies in Ghana – paying its over bloated number of administrative staff gargantuan salaries, while it is engaged in a grossly inefficient management of the cocoa sector. The low price is seen as a major contributory factor to the smuggling of cocoa from the country to Cote d'Ivoire. The justification for 'cheating' them is that government invests the balance in providing several 'freebies' for the cocoa farmers. But as I would enumerate below, even the promised 'freebies' have remained scripted write ups on government documents, and wishful gifts the farmers never receive.

2) Failing government support: Getting access to fertilizer subsidy, benefitting from Cocoa Spraying Programme and other government support is increasingly becoming difficult for cocoa farmers. It is estimated that every year, COCOBOD pumps more than 100 million cedis into the Cocoa Disease Control Programme, CODAPEC, but only about 30 percent of cocoa farmers benefit fully from the programme. Most farmers are forced to buy their own chemicals to deal with pests on their farms, thereby increasing their production cost.

At the local community level, the Cocoa Spraying programme has been hijacked by ruling political party activists who then determine and dictate persons who deserve to benefit from the programme. Managers of the Cocoa Spraying Programme at the local level also divert chemicals government import for the cocoa farmers to be sprayed on their farms free of charge into chemical shops, which the farmers go back to buy, hence increasing their production costs. The mismanagement of the programme has resulted in a situation where currently, about 30 to 40 percent of cocoa trees grown in Ghana are destroyed by pests and diseases, reducing the profits of farmers. Fertilizer subsidies, and lately, promised free fertilizers for farmers are also not reaching them.

3) Poor Management of Social Interventions: Cocoa farmers are not benefitting from social interventions meant to cushion them like the Cocoa Scholarship programme, which is financed using money accruing from sale of cocoa. Scholarship monies are continually being allegedly diverted to children of Civil Service workers who have never stepped foot on cocoa farms before, while cocoa farmers themselves struggle to pay fees for their children. The process of applying for the scholarships has been fraught with large bureaucratic bottle necks that make it impossible for cocoa farmers, majority of whom are not educated to apply and benefit from.

Successive governments have announced various initiatives meant to cushion Cocoa Farmers; like the Cocoa Farmers pension Scheme, as well as Housing schemes for cocoa farmers. But these have largely remained policies on paper, while farmers continue to live in mud and almost collapsing houses and as destitute in their old age.

4) Cheating by local buyers: In Ghana, cocoa farmers don't have the right to sell their cocoa beans directly to chocolate manufacturing companies. It is required by law that they sell all their produce to the government regulatory body, COCOBOD through private licensed cocoa buying companies. But COCOBOD has remained largely negligent in supervising the work of these private cocoa purchasing companies. This has given room for their representatives in various local communities to cheat cocoa farmers. Farmers are often underpaid by local cocoa buyers using 'fixed' scales, set to show a lower reading than the actual weight of their cocoa beans.

5) Inadequate Cocoa Extension Services: Thanks to the work being done by scientists at the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana, CRIG, new methods of producing cocoa and improved seeds are emerging on daily basis. Cocoa extension services are the only means by which cocoa farmers can get access to such technology. But unfortunately, research shows that less than 10 percent of cocoa farmers in Ghana get access to cocoa extension services because of the low numbers of Cocoa Extension Officers in the system. Government promises to train more such officers for dispatch to rural areas have not materialized. This has resulted in most farmers relying still on archaic methods of production, there by resulting in low yields on farms. The effect of this is that Ghanaian cocoa farmers are not producing to the required capacity. In Indonesia, farmers, because they are better skilled produce 1,000 kilograms of cocoa from each hectare of farmland. But in Ghana, farmers are producing less than half of that at 400 kilograms per hectare.

6) Poor road infrastructure: The poor nature of roads in rural communities has remained a key challenge to cocoa producers in the country. In some of the communities, vehicles hardly travel through, and residents walk tens of kilometers to and from their farms. The few vehicles that make the journey charge exorbitant fares, which results in increased costs of production for farmers. This is despite of the establishment of the Cocoa Roads Improvement Project. In the 2010/2011 fiscal year for example, about 200 million cedis was allocated to the project, but the use of such amounts have been inefficient, and majority of it diverted to other roads, and the roads in cocoa communities continue to remain in poor shape.

7) Absence of basic amenities like electricity, clean water, healthcare and mobile telephone network in most cocoa growing communities is also another major headache of residents in cocoa growing communities. Though their money has formed a large chunk of government revenue over the years for the development of the country, they have not been major beneficiaries of various government policies like the Rural Electrification Programme. Money from cocoa sale has been used to directly build cocoa clinics in Accra and Kumasi where cocoa is not grown. Workers of COCOBOD and other well to do citizens have rather been the beneficiaries of healthcare in such areas, to the detriment of cocoa farmers. This has resulted in a lot of young people in the cocoa communities, migrating to urban areas which have the potential to affect volumes of cocoa produced from the rural areas.

These problems are not new, but it's worrying that till date, no government under the Fourth Republican constitution, has found the need to put in motion a reform agenda at COCOBOD to fix what is clearly a broken system.

And the sad part is, every four years, they are given fresh promises by the politicians on the campaign trail that these problems would be fixed. Only for the status quo to remain same when everyone goes back to Accra.

In the light of all these troubles, it sure doesn't help that we run COCOBOD as a political organisation. That is why I find it worrying, the fact that instead of allowing senior COCOBOD officials to rise through the ranks to take up the mantle of leadership, politically divisive figures are plucked from nowhere at the 'whims and caprices' of a president, and damped on this very sensitive institution, as the one in charge. Cocoa farmers don't need managers who don't understand their lives, and politicians who cannot walk in their shoes running their affairs.

And while all the politicking continues, a cocoa farmers' child drops out of school grudgingly, because he missed out on the cocoa scholarship. A child dies of malaria in a cocoa growing community because of the absence of a health post in his village, at a time when his father's sweat has been used to build a cocoa clinic in Accra. While a COCOBOD technocrat is paid his thirteenth month salary as bonus at the end of the year for a magnificent job done, 'mismanaging' our cocoa sector.

These are the reasons for which I would rather thrust on COCOBOD, a 'lap of shame', as their happy Cocoa Day gift on this memorable day.

These farmers are not asking for much. They are determined to make lives better for themselves and their families. But those in whose hands the state has placed their destiny must surely do more, to help them fulfill their aspirations.

May God bless Ghana, and bless our cocoa farmers abundantly.

By Joseph Opoku Gakpo