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Nana Debrah Amanor, Suhum Municipal Chief Farmer, said the country’s cocoa had high content of theo-bromine, thus making it the best cocoa for high quality chocolate.
“Cocoa from Ghana continues to enjoy high premium on the world’s commodities markets, due to its unsurpassable high quality," he said.
Mr Amanor was giving a talk on: “Premium Cocoa Beans” at Akim Oda in the Birim Central Municipality. Though poorly attended, the participants included cocoa farmers, cocoa marketing clerks, hawkers of cocoa drinks and a section of the public.
The Chief Farmer, a former JHS headteacher, owns large hectares of cocoa farms in the Suhum, Asamankese and Akim Oda cocoa growing areas. He had organised frequent meetings with cocoa farmers on similar talks.
He said throughout the world, Ghana, cocoa formed the basis of standards by which other cocoa beans were measured and that the high quality cocoa beans still continued to be the preferred choice of all chocolate and beverage producers.
He observed that this status had been diligently maintained over the years, through the effective quality control practices of Ghana’s Quality Control Division of COCOBOD.
Mr Amanor said the international cocoa standards require cocoa of merchantable quality to be fermented, thoroughly dried, free from smoky beans, free from abnormal or foreign odor and free from any evidence of adulteration.
"The health benefits of cocoa goes beyond delicacy. There is growing evidence of the health benefits of cocoa in fighting cancerous diseases, asthma, stroke, heart attack, aging, hypertension and erectile dysfunction,” hesaid.
According to him, regular consumption of cocoa products, it is believed, gave the user more ant-oxidants which could effectively prevent cancerous and many diseases.
