The Minister for Food and Agriculture, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto in his quest to develop perennial crops, has set targets for District Assemblies.
According to him, 463 million seedlings would be raised and planted on 1.8 million hectares in 5 years.
At a press briefing yesterday in Accra, he explained “We have chosen these six main crops which are the Rubber, Cashew, Oil palm, Coconut, Coffee, Shea and Cotton except for cotton which is a tree from export cot”.
This, according to him, will ensure there is diversity on the part of cocoa and bring out the others just like Cote d’ivoire is doing.
“They are earning about 14 billion dollars a year while Ghana is bent on cocoa alone earn 2 billion dollars a year,” he stressed.
Touching on the cocoa, He said cocoa is now under the Subvention of their ministry and so they will monitor the situation closely.
He compared Kufuor administration which raised cocoa production from less half a million metro tanks to 1 million metro tanks.
According to him Cocoa production started growing up in the year 2010-11 until last 2 years the year 2015- 2016 where it hit a low of less than 8000, however the ministry is willing to send the cocoa industry back to the 1million metro tanks with all kinds of development coming up.
He highlighted cocoa mass spraying and fertilizer application, pruning and hand pollination, cocoa irrigation as the new interventions to increase productivity.
However, there is going to be promotion of chocolate and other cocoa products on domestic and non-traditional export market.
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