Though the cocoa value chain in Ghana is worth $4billion with annual forex inflow from the sector hovering around $3.25 billion, farmers whose sweat bring in these resources remain poor.
To help address this serious challenge, the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) early this year secured an African Development Bank facility of $600 million to help revolutionise the sector by addressing almost all challenges facing the cocoa farmer.
Among these, which has been classified under Cocoa Management System (CMS), are pension scheme for cocoa farmers, which had officially been announced by COCOBOD. Also to be looked at under the CMS is the registration of all cocoa farmers, their families – children and wives – and their successors.
All cocoa farmers would also have their farms surveyed, properly demarcated and the data properly stored in a national data base that is currently under construction. Under the same CMS, cocoa farmers are to be given a special pin code which they would use to sell their produce to the produce buying companies. This means non-cocoa farmers cannot sell cocoa in any part of Ghana because they need the pin code to do so.
The idea behind this innovation is to eliminate the present situation where thieves invade farms to steal the produce that are being dried from the farmers and sell them to the buying companies.
The unique aspect of this innovation, The Chronicle understands, is that any farmer that would try to use his pin code to sell cocoa stolen from colleague farmers by thieves would be caught at the end of the day.
Because farms of all cocoa farmers are going to be surveyed and the size known, COCOBOD will be able to determine the number of bags each farmer would produce each crop season.
For instance, if a farmer who is producing five bags per year, all of the sudden starts selling ten or more bags for the year, it will prompt COCOBOD that something unusual is happening and that the farmer may be using his or her pin code to sell stolen cocoa.
As if this is not enough, COCOBOD is also going to introduce special weighing scales that cannot be tampered with by the produce buying companies.
This will help to eliminate the practice where these produce buying companies adjust the weighing scales with the sole aim of cheating the farmers.
Looking at the way the cocoa farmer has been cheated over the years, The Chronicle is more than happy that COCOBOD has come out with this innovative ideas. In fact, the policy should have been introduced years back, but as the saying goes, better late than never.
Though it is human beings that are going to implement this policy and can, therefore, subject the system to manipulation, at least, some level of success would be achieved at the end of the day.
Ask any cocoa farmer and he or she will admit that years back there was nothing like cocoa theft when the produce is being dried, but today that is the order of the day. According to the farmers, sometimes these thieves go to the extent of stealing cocoa from the farms when it is being fermented.
But with the new pin code policy that is being introduced, the incentive will no more be there for these thieves to continue stealing from the farmers, because they cannot sell the stolen cocoa at the end of the day.
Another commendable aspect of the CMS policy is the pension scheme for the farmers. Despite all their contributions to the development of our national economy, most cocoa farmers die as destitute.
It is, therefore, heart-warming that COCOBOD has looked at their plights and decided to come out with the pension scheme.
The Chronicle, however, has a problem with the way the pension scheme is being or going to be implemented, but that will be a subject for discussion in tomorrow’s edition of this paper.
The post Editorial: The changes in the cocoa sector is commendable appeared first on The Chronicle Online.
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