Nyonkopa distributes GHC 2.3m as Cocoa Horizons Premium for cocoa farmers in Ghana

Nyonkopa Cocoa Buying Limited, a leading License Buying Company, is making giant strides in Ghana with its sustainability programs.

The programs and projects are implemented to scale impact and drive sustainable livelihood resilience and improved rural economy in cocoa communities of the company’s operational areas.

Nyonkopa is a subsidiary of Barry Callebaut Group, the world leading manufacturer of high-quality chocolate and cocoa products.

Barry Callebaut’s Cocoa Horizons Program is an in-house flagship sustainability program designed and implemented in all origin countries including Ghana to promote the company’s vision of sourcing and processing 100% sustainable cocoa globally.

The Program is aimed at providing smallholder cocoa farmers with the necessary farm skills and knowledge to promote wider uptake and adoption towards sustainable intervention for better cocoa livelihoods and nature stewardship.

Through a participatory and experiential learning models as well as practical on-farm technological demonstration, Cocoa Horizons Programs is developing farmers capacities as agro entrepreneurs who are now taking up farming as serious business.

The farmers are trained on productivity enhancement and social capital development models such as Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), Good Environmental Practices (GEP) and Good Social Practices (GSP) which leads to increased crop production and higher incomes, community development and improved quality of life.

This program also empowers women and promotes child protection, education and health in the cocoa communities.

In Ghana, a total of 28,000beneficiary farmers in twenty-four cocoa districts are enrolled onto the Cocoa Horizons Program and it is to be expanded to reach 40,000farmers in the 2017/2018 crop year.

An amount of GHS 2,338,976.00 will be paid out to the farmers as premium for the main crop of 2016/17 cocoa season.

At a farmers’ durbar held at Akim Oda, the Managing Director of Nyonkopa Cocoa Buying Limited, Joshy Varkey and the Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Member of Parliament for the area, William Agyapong Quaitto, jointly presented the cheque to the chief farmer, Alex Kwame Bimpong.

The Deputy Minister of Agriculture reiterated government’s commitment to boost cocoa production in the country by subsiding prices of cocoa fertilizers for farmers and also that to address problems of climate change.

Mr. Agyapong Quaitto also said government plans to implement solar powered irrigated cocoa systems in Ghana to ensure sustainable production.

The Country Sustainability Manager, Robert Asugre said a flagship program christened ‘Forever Chocolate’ will benefit 500,000 farmers globally by 2025.

This program will make farmers prosper, promote thriving nature and positive carbon footprints, promote child welfare, education, health and child-labour free cocoa.