Joseph Boahen Aidoo (left) interacts with some cocoa farmers
The Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) has explained that the initiative to cut down some cocoa trees affected by swollen shoot diseases nationwide is to help improve yields and incomes of hundreds of cocoa farmers.
The COCOBOD is to cut down about 40 per cent of the country’s cocoa trees covering a total area of 680,000 hectares which are infested with the disease or are moribund.
The exercise, code named ‘Rehabilitation of diseased and moribund cocoa trees’, would pave the way for replanting in the affected areas.
Sensitisation programmes are currently ongoing to educate cocoa farmers to ensure the success of the exercise when it finally sets off.
This was disclosed by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of COCOBOD, Joseph Boahen Aidoo, in an interview with DAILY GUIDE after visiting some cocoa growing areas in the Western Region.
The five-day visit was among other things to explain to the cocoa farmers the need to cut down their diseased cocoa trees.
He told the cocoa farmers that COCOBOD had found it convenient to intervene with the mass cutting down of moribund and diseased cocoa trees.
He mentioned that even though the exercise was voluntary and the farmers were not under compulsion to allow their trees to be cut, COCOBOD had to persuade the farmers to allow their diseased cocoa trees to be cut.
“This is because most of the cocoa trees are overage and some of them are affected by the cocoa swollen shoot disease and we want to eradicate this disease”, he indicated.
He added that almost half of the entire cocoa trees in the Western Region expected to be cut down were already unproductive.
He however pointed out that COCOBOD had instituted a package to pay compensation to the affected farmers.
He said the affected farmers would be given initial compensation during the tree-cutting exercise and an additional compensation during the replanting in the affected areas.
“Additionally, COCOBOD will outsource the replanting exercise to service providers who will plant economic trees and plantain suckers, as well as cocoa seedlings. We are going to cut the trees by blocks and if an area is demarcated as a block the cocoa trees in the entire area will be cut and replanted”, he added.
He continued: “If some diseased farms are cut and rehabilitated and others are not, what will happen is that the farms which have not been cut will start spreading the disease”.
He mentioned that a loan had been acquired from the African Development Bank to cater for the compensation of the farmers.
The COCOBOD CEO advised cocoa farmers whose farms were moribund and affected with diseases to take advantage of the exercise and allow their cocoa trees to be cut because they would not regret in future.
Mr Boahen Aidoo further disclosed that in a bid to improve on production level, COCOBOD had started a hand pollination exercise.
According to the CEO, cocoa farmers from across the nation had been introduced to the hand pollination technique to enable them to boost crop yield and returns.
Mr. Aidoo indicated that a hand pollinated cocoa tree could yield between 100 and 800 cocoa pods.
From Emmanuel Opoku, Manso Amenfi
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