Reversing decades of cocoa neglect

After decades of neglect of cocoa production, the Federal Government has made moves to reverse the situation and has announced plans to double production to 500,000 tonnes in the next few years.

Nigeria was the first African country to liberalise the cocoa trade in 1986, which led to a sharp drop in prices and the use of agricultural inputs such as fertiliser and pesticides.

“The Federal government will not relent in implementation of expansion projects for cocoa processing finished goods made from cocoa”, according to Olusegun Aganga, Minister of industry, trade and investment at the 2014 Cocoa summit in Abuja last month.

“With the situation today, about 76 percent of total cocoa produce is from Africa, but less than five percent of the wealth in the value chain is retained here. After many decades of dominating cocoa production, it is worrying that we still remain price takers, and capture so little value. This is not right, and this is what we have set out to change”, he said.

He further stated that through expansion of cocoa processing and manufacturing capacity, government was set to retain more of the value of the cocoa industry in Nigeria, create job and wealth for citizens and generate income for government.

The United Nations Food and Agricultural organization (FAO) has warned that “the ageing of cocoa producing trees also play a role in the decrease of productivity” in Nigeria.

According to FAO, roughly 60 percent of cocoa farms in the country are more than 40 years old. Traditionally, cocoa trees see a drop in output after 25 years.

According to the Minister of Agriculture, Akinwumi Adesina, our cocoa output has grown from 250,000 to 370,000mts in the past two years and we expect to reach more than 600,000mts by 2016 as the new hybrids go into full production.

He also said that more than 1.4 million pods of the hybrids varieties had been distributed to farmers across the cocoa growing states, translating into more than 50,000 seedlings of hybrid cocoa enough to cultivate additional 45,000 hectares of new cocoa plantations.

After the oil boom of the 1970s, the importance of cocoa decline sharply in the country and today Nigeria has fallen behind Ivory Coast and Ghana in the African production ranking.

In recent times, Agricultural production has increased, and so have export of Agricultural commodities including cocoa and other commodities.

JOSEPHINE OKOJIE