The low production of Ghana’s cocoa in the 2014/2015 cocoa season was due to unfavourable weather conditions, Alhaji Idriss Alhassan, the Chair of the Supreme Consultative Council (SCC) of Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) has said.
Alhaji Alhassan said this at a meeting in Sunyani attended by the SCC members, the Brong-Ahafo Regional staff of the COCOBOD and the leadership of cocoa farmers in Brong-Ahafo.
The meeting attended by more than 300 participants was aimed at educating the farmers on their rights and responsibilities to enable them to get fair treatment from cocoa purchasing clerks.
It was also to brief the COCOBOD staff on the formation of the Cocoa Board Workers Union, a move to break away from the Ghana Agricultural Workers Union (GAWU), and the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (ICWU).
Alhaji Alhassan said Management of COCOBOD, the farmers and the staff played their expected roles to ensure increase in cocoa production that season but changes in the weather pattern worked against that expectation.
He said the government provided the necessary inputs and logistics like free seedlings, fertilisers and insecticides to guarantee good yield in the cocoa industry but the rainfall delayed and the subsequent bush fires destroyed many cocoa farms in the cocoa growing areas.
Alhaji Alhassan said politicians must not blame the government for the low yield, saying the nation depended mostly on natural rainfall for farming purposes and any reverse in the rainfall pattern adversely affect the farming industry in general.
Mr Bernard Brown, the Regional Manager of Quality Control Division of COCOBOD, urged the farmers to continue to work hard for the nation to achieve the expected production target in the 2015/2016 cocoa season.
Similar meeting has already been held in the Eastern and the Ashanti Regions.
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Source: GNA