The life of the cocoa industry in Ghana seems to be under threat with 90% of farmers confirmed to be living in poverty. These farmers are thus, calling on the government for a higher remuneration to help attract growers.
According to Uwe Gneiting, Head of Research at OXFAM, research conducted in 2022 revealed that over 90% of cocoa farmers in the country live below the poverty line.
“The findings are quite disturbing. 90% of farmers told us that they were today worse off than they were 3 years ago, considering the incomes and we found a significant decline in production by cocoa farmers over the past 3 harvesting seasons and also just an explosion in the cost of production across the communities.”
Gneiting
Currently, cocoa farmers in Ghana receive ¢800 for a bag of cocoa, a price they lamented is inadequate considering the hard work and high cost of production involved in cocoa cultivation.
One of the cocoa farmers, Patrick Newman Quartey, during in a close session said that:
“One of the poorest people in Ghana today is cocoa farmers. When today, farmers just unite and they amplify their voice that they are going to strike, all the nation is going to shut down because everybody eats in the morning and we eat agriculture, we drink agriculture. We are cheating the farmers and are not giving them the respect.
“All the time, farmers have pending debts over them because, the money is not enough. Even to take off the expenses that the farmer may just use on labor costs in the farm, he runs at a lost because the prices are very low.”
Patrick Quartey
Another farmer, Hamphrey Ayisi disclosed that the current price of a bag of cocoa, which weighs 62.5 kg, is currently at ¢800. Before, that is about 3 years ago, Mr. Ayisi said the price was quite minimal but has shot up because of the current inflation, increasing the cost of production.
Salomey Akosua Effa, another cocoa farmer, on her part said that:
“Cocoa production is a very tedious work, and sometimes, you don’t get money to provide the necessary chemicals for the insects that come into your farm. Sometimes, we get them and sometimes, we don’t get them. And because the money is not enough to purchase all these chemicals, we run at a lost. If the government doesn’t consider the way farmers are suffering and comes to assist them, very soon they will stop.”
Salomey Effa
Companies have high ambitions for but lack of investment in the livelihoods of cocoa farmers
The OXFAM Head of Research revealed that chocolatiers or international corporations, which buy the cocoa have failed to improve the livelihoods of farmers.
“When we visit the communities, we have about 3 to 5 companies doing their own projects in the community rather than working together and recreating senergies across.
“The second one is really one of missing investment. Companies have really high ambitions when it comes to raising the incomes of farmers but they really have not invested sufficient resources into their programmes to achieve those. We sometimes come across communities or company agents that are responsible for 50 communities and of course that level of engagement is not sufficient…”
Gneiting
Meanwhile, the government has planned exporting cocoa worth $1 billion by 2025 but with the current crop of farmers opting out, with the reluctance of the youth into the business and production already declining, as to whether government will be able to achieve its target is uncertain?
Cocoa production has been thehttps://www.theafricancourier.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Cocoa-farm-4.jpg backbone of the Ghanaian economy for several decades. Now, with the commodity accounting for about 30% of the country’s total foreign exchange earnings in 2022, cocoa in Ghana was forecast to product ¢3.41 billion to the country’s GDP.
‘The golden pod’ as it is sometimes called is also expected to account for over ¢4billion of GDP by 2025. Despite the enormous contribution of the golden pod to the economy, the farmers who cultivate the cash crop are one of the poorest in the country.
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