Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) is distributing a total of fifty million improved cocoa seedlings free of charge to farmers in cocoa growing areas of the country this year.
Ghana’s President John Dramani Mahama has announced.
Ahead of that, he said the board had recruited 4,000 people in 87 cocoa growing communities who have planted and are nursing the seedlings.
Touching on welfare of cocoa farmers, President Mahama stated in his third State of the Nation of the State Address said the producer price of cocoa had gone up by 62.74 per cent from Gh₵3392 per tonne to GH₵5520 per tonnne.
The President stated that the COCOBOD’s free fertilizer application programme for farmers would continue in the 2014/2015 season.
He said on the occasion of his second anniversary in office on January 7, 2014, he spent the day at Assin Senchem in the Central Region on the farm of Samuel Tobi, a young cocoa farmer, and his “enthusiastic young friends, who had all taken to cocoa farming”.
“I felt encouraged that there is an emerging young generation of cocoa farmers who will take over from the older generation,” he said
To this end, President Mahama had requested COCOBOD to unveil a programme to acquire land to engage more young people in cocoa farming. African Eye News.com
