The country needs five Tree Global technologies, an international nursery company, to exceed the one million tonnes of cocoa target, Mrs Yaa Peprah Amekudzi, the Country Lead, Mondelez International Cocoa Life Programme has said.
She said currently the country has only one of the Tree Global facility in Tafo in the Eastern region, serving five of the six cocoa growing regions under the cocoa life project, which seeks to provide farmers with improved and quality cocoa seedlings.
The project is being implemented by Mondelez International, a leading chocolate company.
Speaking in an interview at a media outreach programme in the Eastern region on the sustainability of the country’s cocoa sector, MrsAmekudzi noted that it was imperative to have five of such facilities across the cocoa regions to be able to distribute more seedlings to farmers.
She said under the project, cocoa farmers requested 2.3 million seedlings from Tree Global for planting, but the company could not meet the demand because of the limited facility located in Tafo.
Mrs Amekudzi said with the spate of illegal mining activities in the country, the government must focus on investing in Tree Global facilities since it had the capacity of producing yields in two to three years compared to the traditional yields of five to eight years.
She explained that Tree Global had maximized and created positive social impact such as local employment, skills development, food supply and income generation through the value chain approach.
MrsAmekudzi was of the view that country could increase cocoa production, if stakeholders adhered to good agricultural practices with robust planting materials without dependent on only fertilizers.
