No serious storyteller can narrate Uganda’s post-independence story without giving prominence to the famous Luweero triangle. It is that pivotal but that is a story for another day.
For decades, farmers in Uganda have earned very little, sometimes nothing from their produce and farmland due to issues such as failure to source the right inputs, absence of modernization equipment and inability to access ready markets among others.
This comes after a successful two-year-long rehabilitation of hundreds of acres of Cocoa Swollen Shoot Viral Disease (CSSVD) infected farms, under the COCOBOD, and Government funded Cocoa Rehabilitation Programme.
The Chief Executive of COCOBOD, Hon Joseph Boahen Aidoo, made this announcement when he inspected a 145.8-hector rehabilitated cocoa farm at Kumikrom in the Bekwai District of the Western Region.
The inspection was part of a two-day field and farmer-engagement tour of some cocoa communities in the Western North Region. It was also an opportunity for the Chief Executive to check the progress of some cocoa road projects in the Region.
During his interaction with the cocoa farmers at Kumikrom, he disclosed that it was time for early beneficiaries of the rehabilitation programme to take over the care of their farms.
He asked the farmers to adhere strictly to good agronomic and agroforestry practices to ensure that the farms can produce at their optimum capacity without adverse impacts on the environment.
The National Cocoa Rehabilitation Programme, which was officially launched by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo in 2020, was devised by COCOBOD to curtail the rapid spread of CSSVD on cocoa farms.
The process begins with the cutting and chemical treatment of cocoa trees on diseased farms. The farms are then replanted with disease-tolerant, early bearing, high yielding cocoa varieties,
During the two-year-long rehabilitation process, COCOBOD bears the cost of all the activities on the farm and the cost of labour. It also gives an amount of GH₵1000.00 per hector to each farmer who has an infected farm with is being rehabilitated. In the case of tenancy, both affected tenant farmers and their landowners are compensated.
A survey conducted in 2017 found that more than half of the 509,295.53 hectares of cocoa farm in the Western North Region had been infected and nationally 315,886 hectares out of a total of 1.9 million hectares of cocoa farm had been lost to CSSVD.
Consequently, cocoa production in the Western North Region had dropped from over 330,000mt in 2010/2011 to 154,000mt.
Besides the primary goal of stopping the further spread of the disease and restoring the productivity of CSSVD devastated farms, the programme also safeguards the livelihoods of cocoa farmers, helps to ensure better food security through the planting of plantains, tubers and grains, during the first two years as the cocoa trees’ growth.
Hundreds of thousands of jobs have also been created for the youth in cocoa communities, who provide labour and technical support to rehabilitate the cocoa farms.
Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto
The minister of Agric has made it known to Ghanaians that, there will not be food shortage in the country this year or next year despite the prevailing conditions in the country.This was made known in Accra.News reaching our desk is that, there is an acute food shortage even in the hinterlands and the farming communities where our food is produced.
Prices of food in most farming communities are soaring higher everyday.Every Ghanaian should prepare, there are hard times ahead.
News reaching cocoakuafour.com shows that, there would be great yields next season so far as the golden fruit is concerned.This was made known in an interview with farmers at Kasapin in the Ahafo Region.Farmers have high hopes for abundant harvest of cocoa come next season. Meanwhile looking at the current economic hardships in the country, farmers were worried about the government's ability to get enough funds to buy their produce They are worried that there would be shortage of funds for the next season.
The 2021/22 cocoa season has ended successfully, all license buying companies have evacuated their final consignments to the various takeover centers in the country.Meanwhile due to the current economic hardships in the country, cocoa farmers are pleading with government to increase the producer price of cocoa for the next season.
Source:https://cocoakuafour.blogspot.com
Parents in the cocoa farming communities of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, where over 65% of the world’s cocoa comes from, have the same concern...
