The Ghana Cocoa Board is deploying 7,000 people to train 50,000 farmers at cocoa growing areas in the country under its artificial hand pollination programme on a pilot basis.
Cocobod said it would increase the farm crews to 30,000 to cover all cocoa farmers in the country by April next year. This was revealed at the launch of the programme at Awudua in the Ahafo Ano South district of the Ashanti Region.
Speaking at an event to launch the new programme, Chief Executive Officer of Cocobod, Joseph Boahen Aidoo, indicated that the initiative would go a long way to increase the yields of cocoa farmers in the country.
According to him, cocoa farmers in Ghana must be able to increase their yields from an average 0.45 tonnes per hectare to two tonnes and above per hectare as produced by their counterparts in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Ecuador.
Mr Aidoo encouraged cocoa farmers to take advantage of the initiative to boost their yields.
He said: “With the new government and new management of Cocobod, we are making an intervention artificially to do the pollination that is why we are recruiting 30,000 farm crews who will be trained to also train the farmers on how to do hand pollination.
“It’s just a matter of picking the pollen. The pollen is on the flower so you pick the pollen and then you drop it on the stigma, that’s all. And then you have this cross fertilisation which used to be done by insects but the insects called natural pollinators are getting depleted so we are asking the farmers to do that.
“At the moment, farmers are producing at the average 0.45 tonnes per hectare whereas when you go to Malaysia, Indonesia, Ecuador they are doing two tonnes per hectare. Some are even doing more than two tonnes. We want our farmers to also reach that target and you can only do that when you are doing hand pollination.”
He added that government would continue to stabilise the cocoa producer price, but will focus on increasing productivity.
“We want to ensure that as many flowers as can be pollinated should be done. All these will turn to fruits for the farmers. The world market price of cocoa is falling, we want the farmers to have increased productivity per hectare to compensate for the fall in price. While they are making more production per hectare of a farm, it means that you will be having more money even as the price remains the same.”
Source: Ghana/AccraFM.com
