General Mosquito Rubbishes Cocoa Spraying

JOHNSON ASIEDU Nketiah, a.k.a Gen Mosquito, the Wenchi West Member of Parliament (MP), and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) shadow minister of Agriculture, says that the total output of cocoa beans in the just-ended cocoa season is far below expectations.

"If the government had listened to us, we would be talking about a national yield of 700,000 to 800,000 tonnes of cocoa but not the 450,000 tonnes the minister of Finance is talking about"

Speaking in an interview with The Chronicle, he cautioned that the government must muster enough courage to collapse the mass spraying exercise since the two years of the exercise has been wasted.

He said the NDC government had once achieved the figure of 450,000 and the figure should have been tremendously improved by now.

In the view of Mr. Nketiah, the mass spraying exercise should be changed into a holistic high technology maintenance cocoa programme, since the spraying is only one aspect of the whole culture of cocoa maintenance.

He noted that, had it not been the volatile situation in Cote d'Ivoire, cocoa smuggling would have gone on earnestly.

He lamented that, "if our anti-smuggling measures can only work when our colleagues in the sub region like Cote d'Ivoire are in crisis then we should not be proud of these policies".

According to him the holistic approach should include other things like control of shade, capsid, black pod, mistle toe and the use of a specific cocoa land fertilizer.

He referred to a pilot programme, which was done in the NDC era which proved that with that type of holistic approach the current yield of the farms, which is about 341 kilogrammes per hectare, could be tripled within three years.

Mr Nketiah stressed that; with that strategy the total national output could hit a minimum of 700,000 tonnes within the first two years and subsequently 1.2 million tonnes.

He said after individual cocoa companies had decided to adapt to the strategy evolved under the NDC by applying the holistic approach, at the end of last year the government saw the wisdom of applying that strategy because it was over and above the government's approach.

"Even if there is a slight increase it should be attributed to the NDC and the cocoa companies," he said.

Touching on the producer price of cocoa, Mr. Nketiah noted that the confusion that seems to exist about the percentage of world market price the government was paying by way of producer price was because of the disagreement between the NDC and this government as to the basis of the calculation.

He argued that it was wrong for the government to "pursue the sale of cocoa and still make the mistake of under selling the product.

He explained that last year in spite of the fact that the world market price kept on rising till it hit $500,000 per tonne the government had contracted to sell the cocoa at an average price of $1,200 per tonne.

Mr. Nketiah described the act by the government as a criminal way of wasting national resources since it did not take advantage of the full boom of cocoa price increase, as evidenced by figures in the 2002/2003 budget.