{"id":49201,"date":"2014-09-19T09:45:43","date_gmt":"2014-09-19T09:45:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=49201"},"modified":"2014-09-19T09:45:43","modified_gmt":"2014-09-19T09:45:43","slug":"article-cocoa-is-ghana-and-ghana-should-be-cocoa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2014\/09\/article-cocoa-is-ghana-and-ghana-should-be-cocoa\/","title":{"rendered":"ARTICLE: Cocoa is Ghana and Ghana should be cocoa"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Bernard Owusu Mensah (<\/span>dnkowusu@gmail.com<\/a>)<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Cocoa tree is assumed as a native tree of the Amazon basin and other tropical South and Central America.<\/p>\n Carolus Linnaeus renamed the cocoa tree theobramo cacao which literally means \u201cfood of the Gods\u201d. \u00a0Hernando Cortez was the first person who imported cocoa to Spain from South America in 1528. Many South American countries particularly Ecuador embraced and participated in cocoa production.<\/p>\n At the end of the 17th<\/sup> century European nations (Curacao of Holland, Guyana and Grenada of France, Great Britain and Hispaniola as it was called then) engaged in cocoa production. In the 19th<\/sup> Century, this \u201cmagic seed\u201d was introduced to the African soils. Principe, Sao pome, Nigeria, Fernando po and later Ghana became the first African countries to start cocoa production. Today, Africa particularly West Africa (Ghana and Ivory Coast) is taking commanding lead in the production of this cash crop.<\/p>\n Aside gold, cocoa comes to mind whenever Ghana is mentioned.<\/p>\n The Cocoa sector alone employs over 700,000 (this figure greater than the public servants in Ghana) farmers in the country. As history chronicles, Cocoa was introduced in the southern region of the Gold coast in the mid 19th<\/sup> century by a gallant patriot cum commercial farmer (Tetteh Quarshie). He intelligently but miraculously transported this seed from Fernando po and first planted the seed at the Eastern region districts of Akuapem. Farmers from other regions in the country replicated the production of this crop. It is worthy of note that this crop can thrive in almost all the ten regions of Ghana.<\/p>\n Most cocoa plantations in Ghana are family farms and cover between two (2) to ten (10) hectares of land. In Ghana as well as in many African countries, the cocoa beans are harvested in September\/October and may continue until January\/March.<\/p>\n \u00a0The Ghanaian cocoa sector has had a checkered success story. There have been several good times and bad times for this sector. For example, but for this sector, a facility would not have been procured by our first president Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah to build the Akosombo dam (the leading power supply source for the country since independence). Again, Cocoa Marketing Company (CMB) at its inception made profits to the extent that they were in good financial standing to grant soft loans to the government to share in the burden of the second Development plan of the country. This clearly indicates the cocoa sub-sector through the CMB was one of the spines for the public purse.<\/p>\n No wonder the CPP government consciously took cocoa production seriously (channeled its energies to make the sector vibrant particularly in the early 1960s) to the extent that between 1960 and 1962, cocoa production reached an unprecedented level of 430000 and 580000 tons in 1964.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0Despite the success stories as initially intimated, the sector has suffered several bruises. For example in the 1960s and 70s the sector nearly collapsed only to pick up signs recovery in the 1980s and recovered fully in the mid 1990s. In fact, there have been instances in the country history where cocoa trees were deliberated felled and destroyed to plant other crops like plantain and palm trees.<\/p>\n GENERAL DETERMINANTS<\/b><\/p>\n There are several factors that determine overall national cocoa output for a particular year. The factors that determine cocoa production in the country can be grouped into sub themes, namely environmental factors, geographical factors and economic factors and social factors.<\/p>\n \u00a0Under the environmental factor, several factors are considered. Prominent among them is availability of forest area.<\/p>\n This looks at the ecology of the place. The ecological factors include but not limited to deforestation (no wonder cocoa production was all time low in 1983 when bush fires were the order of the day) and availability of pests and diseases. Any time pest\u2019s attacks on cocoa become eminent in a particular area, cocoa farmers become demoralize and react in a way that affects cocoa production in that particular area thereby affecting the overall national cocoa output. \u00a0For example Outbreak of pests and diseases (particularly swollen shoot virus) reduced production in the Eastern region in the early 1940s pushing cocoa cultivation further into the Western Brong Ahafo frontier (Amanor 2010).<\/p>\n Not all but also, one of the major reasons why farmers shifted from cocoa production and deliberately cut down and destroyed a lot of cocoa farms in the late 1970s and the early 1980s was attacks on the cocoa by the swollen shoot virus.<\/p>\n Social factors are chief driving forces for migration. Migration affects labour supply for cocoa production. Labour works on cocoa farms so if a lot of dwellers in the cocoa growing areas shift their geographical location due to some social factors (unavailability of basic comfortable social infrastructure), the hands needed to cultivate the cocoa farms will not be enough hence reducing the total cocoa production.<\/p>\n Economic factors include several factors but I will fully touch on this under a different thematic area.<\/p>\n INTERVENTION<\/b><\/p>\n The interventions made in the cocoa sector are in phases. The interventions or policy decisions are implemented due to the exigencies of the time. Over the years, the governments have made so many interventions to help solve some damning challenges the sector faced. Some of the interventions made are enumerated in the subsequent paragraphs<\/p>\n The Cocoa Marketing Board was formed in 1947 following a commission\u2019s recommendation after serious misunderstanding ensued between the farmers and the foreign buyers in 1937. At the heart of the conflict was the dissatisfaction of the farmers due to low prices cocoa was bought by the European buyers. The commission submitted its report and made recommendation in 1938 but due to 1939 war, the recommendations were never implemented until 1947.<\/p>\n