Govt Pledges To Improve Upon Cocoa Yield
The 2011 Cocoa Farmers Forum opened in Accra yesterday with a pledge by the government to continue to implement policies that would improve crop yield such as the supply of free improved seedlings to replace old low-yielding trees.
The Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Dr Kwabena Duffuor, who made the promise when he opened the forum, noted that since the Ghanaian economy had become the fastest growing in the world partly as a result of the boom in the cocoa industry, there was the need to continuously invest in the sector.
The two-day forum, on the theme: “Cocoa farmers: Contributing towards policy formulation and implementation”, is to begin the process of involving cocoa farmers in the development of policies that impact on their production processes, as well as work out solutions to problems that confront them.
It is being organised by the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), the Sustainable Tree Crop Programme (STCP) of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and the European Union (EU).
In attendance are 250 cocoa farmers from all over the country.
On August 18, 2011, COCOBOD announced an increase in yield from 750,000 tonnes to more than 1,004,194 tonnes for the 2010/2011 cocoa season, the highest in the country’s history.
The achievement, it is believed, has set the country on a course to regain its position as the largest producer of cocoa in the world.
Currently, in a bid to increase yield, mass cocoa-spraying exercises are undertaken to destroy the insects, bacteria and viruses harmful to the crop.
In addition, old but healthy cocoa trees which are 30 years and above and are considered unproductive economically are destroyed and farmers provided with free and improved seedlings to replace them.
Dr Duffuor noted that the increase in cocoa production was the result of effective collaboration between the government, COCOBOD, the Licensed Buying Companies (LBCs) and other stakeholders, adding that the collaboration would continue in order to boost production.
He urged the farmers to come up with clear approaches to making relevant input into policy decisions that would see cocoa production increase even beyond the achieved one million target.
The Chief Executive of the COCOBOD, Mr Anthony Fofie, said although the country had attained one million tonnes, it was below the desired target.
He said the current yield of 450 kilogrammes of cocoa per hectare was below expectation and added that the country needed to achieve at least one thousand kilogrammes per hectare.
Mr Fofie said although the country had discovered crude oil in commercial quantities, it would still place a lot of emphasis on cocoa because of the huge foreign exchange earnings the country derived from its export.
He noted that currently the COCOBOD faced problems such as lack of skills on the part of the average cocoa farmer to adopt technological innovations, pest and disease control, smuggling of fertilisers and other inputs into neighbouring countries and refusal of young people to embark on cocoa farming.