Farmers urged to make Ghana world’s number one cocoa producer

A five-day intensive educational programme for 30 selected cocoa farmers has ended with a call on participants to make the country the number one world cocoa producer.

The training programme themed “Farmer Business School” is the brain work of the Ghana Cocoa Board in collaboration with the World Cocoa Foundation and GIZ, a German Foundation Firm with technical advice from the Ministry of Food and Agriculture.

Participants were taken through farm management, basics of health nutrition and farm management for food security, planning of production and financial management, use of gross margin, unit cost, labour productivity and capital productivity and decision making to seize income opportunities.

Other areas include how to obtain good financial services, adding value to cocoa, prepare investment in planting and re-planting of cocoa as well as benefits from membership of farmer organisations.

Mr Solomon K. Adjei, a Resource Person, told the Ghana News Agency that the programme started as a pilot project in the Breman Asikuma Zone of the Ghana Cocoa Board in March 2011 and that 14 batches of 30 farmer groups have since been trained.

He said the training programme is ongoing and that 12 batches of 30 farmers would be trained on a yearly basis.

Source: GNA