70 million improved cocoa seedlings for farmers

The Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) will, from next year, make available 70 million improved hybrid cocoa seedlings for free distribution to farmers.

The move is to ensure that beneficiary farmers expand their cocoa farms and also improve on their yields.

A Deputy Managing Director of COCOBOD, Dr Francis Kofi Oppong, announced this at the annual meeting of the Kuapa Kokoo Farmers Union, a farmer group drawn from the Ashanti, Brong Ahafo, Central, Eastern and Western regions in Kumasi last Friday.

This year, the Ghana Cocoa Board has distributed 50 million seedlings to the farmers.

Dr Oppong encouraged farmers to take advantage of the free distribution exercise to rehabilitate their farmlands and indicated that the exercise formed part of measures to ensure that the country produced the best quality cocoa beans, and to position itself as the highest producer of cocoa in the world.

He explained that the hybrid seedlings had been produced with expertise from the Health and Extension Division (CHED) and the Seed Production Unit (SPD) of the COCOBOD.

Old farmers

Dr Oppong noted that following the retirement of some hardworking farmers due to old age, the COCOBOD had initiated a programme that would ensure that young people were given training and resources to cultivate their own farms as a form of encouragement to attract the youth into farming.

He appealed to chiefs and landowners to make land available for the youth who were desirous of farming in their respective communities.
He cautioned farmers to be wary of galamsey operators who approached them with huge sums of money and other material things to purchase their cocoa farms which they eventually use for the mining of gold.

Dr Oppong said such practices were inimical to the progress of the farmers since they would no more have their lands back to engage in their farming activities to take care of their families.

Kuapa

The President of the Kuapa Kokoo, Mrs Fatima Ali, announced that through their collective efforts, they were able to realise 720,000 bags, thus exceeding their target of 640,000 bags.`

She said with the support of their partners, they had also been able to extend healthcare to group members and also instituted a tele-medicine programme, where sick farmers anywhere in the four regions could be treated by a medical doctor in Kumasi through technology.