Investigations conducted by The Chronicle have established that cocoa farmers in the Prestea-Huni-Valley Municipality in the Western Region are cutting down trees of the cash crop and replanting them with rubber seedlings.
In areas such as Damang, Hunni-Valley, Abosso, Atta Ne Atta, and Prestea large swathe of cocoa farms have been cut down. Some of the farmers claimed they could not buy chemicals and fertilisers, which were formerly supplied free of charge to them to maintain the farms.
The Cocoa Extension Officer in charge of Prestea-Hunni-Valley, Thomas Ampem Broni, confirmed the story, but was quick to add that farmers who had cut down their cocoa trees and replacing them with rubber seedlings were few.
The Municipal Chief Cocoa Farmer, Nana Thomas Boakye, also confirmed in a telephone interview with this reporter, that large tracts of cocoa farms had been cut down by some of the farmers and replanted with rubber trees. “Yesterday, I was in a farm of a friend who has cut down his eight acreage cocoa farm in place of rubber. So it is true, farmers are cutting down their cocoa farms,” he confirmed.
According to him, as a Municipal Chief Farmer, he had also heard that farmers were cutting down their cocoa trees, but what he could testify to was the eight acreage farm he had personally seen. He promised to cut down his own cocoa trees and replant with rubber, because the cocoa farm business was no longer lucrative.
According to him, the expenses incurred in buying fuel, fertiliser, weeding, insecticide and growing the cocoa trees far outweighed the money they made after harvesting the cocoa. The price of a box of insecticide, he claimed, was equal to the price of a bag of cocoa.
A box of insecticide, which hitherto was sold at GH¢60 was now selling at GH¢600, whilst a bag of cocoa was sold at GH¢660. From the analysis, he said, it was obvious the cocoa business was dying.
Another farmer, John Enimil, also confirmed in a telephone interview, that he had cut down his 16 acreage cocoa farm and replanted it with rubber. He said he began cutting down the farm in March.
According to him, though several Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) officials visited his farm to discourage him from cutting down the trees, he ignored them.
“I buy fuel, insecticide, weedicide, and spray the farm, but what you get after harvesting the cocoa is nothing to write home about. So I told the Cocoa Board executives that I could not go ahead to maintain the farm. They convinced me to maintain the farm, but I stood on my ground and cut down the 16 acreage farm, and now have replanted [it] with rubber,” he told this reporter.
John Enimil explained that he did not need fuel, chemicals and to spray his rubber plantation, as he would have done to the cocoa farm, threatened to cut down another 30 acres of his cocoa farm if the business did not improve.
The cocoa farmer also told The Chronicle that he was not the only farmer who had cut down his cocoa trees and replaced them with rubber, saying a number of farmers had also done same.
The Member of Parliament (MP) for the area, Robert Wisdom Cudjoe, also confirmed to this reporter that some of the farmers were cutting down their cocoa trees for rubber because they could not break even.
He said on one of his rounds, the Chief of ‘Atta Ne Atta’ in Prestea informed him how his subjects had cut down their cocoa farms in place of rubber plantations. He said from the information given by the Chief, it was possible a number of other areas had also suffered the same fate.
MP Wisdom Cudjoe told this reporter in a telephone interview that he had made it part of his itinerary to educate cocoa farmers on the importance of the cash crop in any of constituency programme he attends on.
His reason was that, the future of rubber plantation was unknown as compared to cocoa.
Ghana Rubber Estate and Plantation (GREL), the company behind the rubber plantations, currently has 30,155 hectares of rubber plantation, out of which 15,004 had matured. The company also has 3,700 out growers.
