Greetings Dear Gardeners and lovers of farming!
Today I want to share with you my tour to a friend's cocoa farm near my community. I was very happy to 😊😁 see how my friend's cocoa farm is flourishing and in good condition. This is the right time that most cocoa pods are harvested in larger quantities for the processing of the cocoa beans for marketing. I was able to have in touch with some of the matured pods ready to ripe for harvesting. The pods with green colour and violet are on the verge of ripening. The cocoa farm isn't all that large, about half an acre but since the crop is one of the main producing cash crop they are sold at higher prices.
At my friend's cocoa farm examining how healthy his cocoa farm is, the violet colour looks so healthy
It has been a time seeing such healthy cocoa pods. It was in those 20th century when most lands well fertile, what we call the virgin forest. As the number of population kept increase with the conversion of most farm lands into settlement, many virgin forests were destroyed. Ideally, a healthy pod should be devoid of some dark spots and black pod fungi. For these pods are healthy, very green and we'll formed pods.
Checking the healthy cocoa pods
Even though the main Harvest season begins at October, but the large quantities are mostly harvested in November where most pods are riped. When the cocoa farm is treated well with recommend chemicals like confidor to drive away most pest, from the shoot to the base are able to give flowers. Even though, most flowers are blown by the storms which normally hit some places. We have other chemicals that we can spray in the farm to keep the flowers on the branches. The early bearers flowers can begin as early as July and by December we would see few cocoa plants having pods. I could see that these pods are riping in my friend's farm.
Some cocoa pods Beginning to ripe
One advantage that most farmers have is having the opportunity to do other side businesses like raising poultry to feed under the cocoa farm if the farm is sanitized. I was very happy 😁 to see my friend having some local fowls feeding on natural feed like worms, ants and crikets. Actually, he doesn't incur any cost of proper feeding on the fowls, but the fowls fend for themselves by eating any feeds they come across. The fowls also have free range to move around the environment. The cocoa canopy closure give extra shades for the local poultry birds.
Some local fowls feeding other the cocoa farm
Find these cocoa plants being treated well with the required planting intervals. The pruning has also being done well which has kept the farm very nice.
The cocoa tree with many pods
The challenges cocoa farmers are facing
Ghana was rated one of the producing of cocoa in the whole World. But can we now boast of being the best producing of cocoa now? I believe by now La Cote'd Voire is now one of the best Cocoa producers. Like I said, most lands are faced with the issue of illegal mining, what we call galamsey. Due to the rampant surface mining negotiated between land owners and the miners, the cocoa lands are shrinking every year. The miners give huge some of money to the land owners at the exchange of mining. Not does this activity only destroy our lands, but also destroy our water bodies too.
There is a recent attempt of Government to eradicate the illegal mining from rural areas. But the issue has been standstill. Our soldiers have been deployed at many occasions but it's really difficult to curb it entirely since there are underground negotiation between some of the miners, politicians and land owners. The saddest news is when I saw a cocoa farm being destroyed for surface mining. The reality under ground is that most farmers when they received these huge sum of money, they aren't able to utilize it to establish business. The below cocoa farm have being dug for mining
source
In my feasibility studies, cocoa plants have lifespan of 50 years, so in a long term investment, a farmer can benefit from cocoa farm for so many years, getting consistent money for long. Imagine if a farm gets 1 tonne every for 50 years he is getting 50 tonnes. The farmer can die a his family will inherit the cocoa farm and continue harvesting the proceeds. How much would the miners give to the cocoa farmers on their lands that can cater for his generation for 50years? The miners give the farmer only meagre money that cannot even support them for year.
These are few challenges cocoa farmers are facing. With this canker, the quantity of cocoa production has been declined drastically beyong our imagination. If we don't take concrete effort to curb the situation, it would reduce one of the leading cash crop in our country. Thanks for your attention!
