Farmers in the cocoa growing areas of the Western North region have been given a new lease of life following Ghana Cocoa Board (Cocobod’s) Cocoa Rehabilitation Programme that is being implemented in these communities which has their farms ravaged by effects of the Cocoa Swollen Shoot Virus Disease (CSSVD).

According to the Senior Public Affairs Manager of Cocobod Mr.Fiifi Boafo, but for the Board’s cleverly thought-out Cocoa Rehabilitation Programme rolled out in the region by the new Management of COCOBOD, thousands of farmers in the region would have migrated to cities in search of non-existent jobs.

He noted that the Board’s incentivized package which requires an affected farmers and his land owner to receive Gh¢1000 each for every hectare of diseased cocoa farm cut and treated has motivated many farmers to willingly give out their farms to be rehabilitated.

Mr Boafo was speaking on Citi Tv’s ‘The Point of View’ programme during which he explained over 10-points achievements within the cocoa sector over the past few years. He bemoaned the previous administration’s ineptitude in addressing the CSSVD pandemic in the country citing a scheme which required cocoa farmers to bear the full cost of cutting and replanting their diseased farms.

‘… that poor approach discouraged Ghanaian cocoa farmers from treating their farms leading to further and rampant spread of the disease’, adding, that the new package introduced by the current administration was carefully done to provide alternative sources of livelihoods to assist farmers cope with the loss in incomes arising from the implementation of the rehabilitation programme.

‘The current package was designed with the cocoa farmer in mind – aside of the compensation paid to him and his landowner by the Board, COCOBOD bears the full costs of hybrid cocoa seedlings, plantain suckers and labourers who plant and maintain the farms for 2 years – even with the plantains, the farmer is allowed to harvest and sell for extra income and in the ensuing year, the farmers are again allowed to harvest the offshoots of the suckers and sell to COCOBOD to establish new farms,’ he noted.

Mr. Boafo further hinted that such a fantastic scheme has caused several cocoa farmers who lost their livelihoods to the CSSVD and migrated to the Brong Ahafo and parts of the Eastern Region to return to rebuild their abodes and continue their one time main source of income.

‘About 8,904 farmers have had their farms treated with some 11,564.28 hectares of swollen shoot affected farms in the Western North and Eastern Regions treated and planted with cocoa, plantain and economic shade trees. In all, 50,000 youth have been recruited under the programme which is expected to run for the next five years,” he added.

He again assured that the next phase of the rehabilitation programmme will cover 154,400 hectares of diseased and overaged cocoa farms and promised that every single farmer whose farm has been affected by the virus will not be left out in the on-going compensation exercise once data gathered are verified.

Mr Boafo was grateful to cocoa farmers, opinion leaders and traditional rulers for their invaluable contribution towards the steadily successes chalked so far.