Chief Executive Officer of COCOBOD, Joseph Boahen Aidoo is proposing a price increase for smallholder cocoa farmers as a way to sustain cocoa production without causing deforestation.
Mr. Boahen Aidoo has cast doubt over a National Implementation Plan launched by the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources to reduce deforestation and forest degradation in cocoa growing communities.
According to him, until smallholder cocoa farmers are paid adequately for the beans they produce, they will continue to exploit the forest to sustain their livelihoods.
“Farmers have been driven by poverty, to go into deforestation. So if the prices of cocoa can be increased for the farmers so that they will have remunerative prices, then they will be in a better position to have sustainable cocoa production without necessarily expanding their cocoa farms.”
“If the price cannot be increase then we have to look at productivity per hectare. That include increasing the farm yield for the farmer, for instance, we can move the farmer from doing three bags per acre to 20 bags per acre. So that even when the price of cocoa falls on the world market, the farmer will have enough income”, he added.
On his part, Deputy Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Mr. Benito Owusu-Bio assured that farmers in cocoa growing communities will be engaged as part of stakeholder consultations for the implementation of the plan.
The National Implementation Plan seeks to halt further deforestation and forest degradation in five regions, namely the Ashanti, Central, Eastern Western and the Brong Ahafo regions, over the next two years.
It is estimated that 2.5 million hectares of forest cover in the five regions have already been destroyed.