C/R Cocoa farmers to get more high-tech seedlings

Atobiase (C/R), Nov 20, GNA- Mr C.D Awuah, Jukwa District Officer of Ccocoa Swollen Shoot Virus Disease (CSSVD) Control Unit of the Ghana Cocoa Board (Cocobod) has denied rumours that the demand for voters ID cards from the farmers before their diseased farms are treated was not political but rather it would assist the unit to easily identify the farmers.

He said Ghana has been rated as the second world leading quality cocoa producing country because farmers adhere strictly to the instructions from the field technical officers.

Mr Awuah, who was speaking at a farmers' forum at Atobiase said this had been achieved through regular maintenance, spraying and replanting of cocoa farms by the farmers in the country.

Mr Antwi Adjei, Acting Central Regional Manager of the Unit said the unit supplied a total of 1.3 million high-tech cocoa seedlings to farmers on credit basis this year.

He said about 1.6 million seedlings are expected to be supplied to farmers who lost their farms through treatment of diseased farms.

Mr Adjei said that farmers who are supplied the seedlings would pay for when their compensations for diseased farms destroyed in the exercise, are paid.

He noted that the government has voted a substantial amount for all diseased farms treated this year before the next cocoa season.

The acting Regional Manager denied rumours that when the farmers allow their cocoa diseased farms to be destroyed, government would not give them compensation, as false and baseless.

He stressed that the Unit will nurse 350,000 seedlings at Wassa Atobiase early next year so that farmers in the area would get new high-tech seedlings to cultivate on their farms.

He therefore urged cocoa farmers whose farms have been affected by the disease to allow the unit to cut down the trees in order that it would not spread to other farms.

The Acting Manager said due to administrative lapses certain incentives had not been paid to farmers at Atobiase and assured the farmers that those anomalies would be corrected.

On the cocoa mass spraying exercise, he assured farmers whose farms were not covered due to inadequate gangs that everything possible would be done to treat their farms.

The Acting Regional Manager cautioned cocoa farmers to use the prescribed insecticides from the Unit to spray their farms.