About 460 cocoa farmers from five communities in the Eastern Region have attended a rally on ‘Registration and measurement of farms, for free distribution of hybrid cocoa seedlings and fertilizer’.
The forum, which was organized by the Cocoa Health and Extension Division of COCOBOD, was also to discuss with the farmers how to increase productivity to help move the country from its current position, as the second highest cocoa producer to the first position.
The participants were drawn from Aboabo, Store Ano, Kwamekyere, Chenkularbi, including Adimedim and its environs in the Ayensuano District.
Mr Michael Gyasi, the Suhum Municipal Officer in-charge of the Cocoa Health and Extension Service, spoke extensively on the Model Farm, saying registered disease free farms were entitled to free fertilizers.
He said the allocation was free and that the farmers need not pay anything to their various extension officers, who might demand a fee before measuring their farms for the allocation.
In a related development, similar rallies were organized for about 650 farmers at Coaltar and 860 farmers at Anum Apapam in the Eastern Region, to help prepare them for the 2014/15 cocoa season, which began in October, last year.
Mr Gyasi advised the cocoa farmers to report anyone, who sought to play politics with the mass spraying exercise, to either his office, the Municipal Chief Executive or the Eastern Regional Minister.
He said: ‘Cocoa is Ghana, Ghana is cocoa, and this portrays the important role cocoa plays in the economy of Ghana’.
At those rallies, Mr Gyasi briefed participants on the need to cut down all diseased cocoa trees for replanting and rehabilitation of farms, which were over 30 years and above.
He reminded the participants on the need to pay attention to pertinent details like pruning, brushing, shade management and removal of all other diseased pods, to ensure proper and satisfactory farming, and advised them not to use children for such farm jobs,since it constitutes child labour.
Nene Ashaley Adjabeng, the Anum Apapam Chief Farmer, said the practice of some spraying gangs charging fees before farms were sprayed must stop since it was illegal and undermined the spraying exercise.
He said in spite of the problems and other operational difficulties that farmers encounter, the free allocation exercise had generally been described by his colleagues as laudable.
GNA
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