The Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), regulators of the country's
cocoa industry, has downplayed the findings of a report which suggests that
cocoa production in West African could fall by two per cent as a result of
rising temperatures.
The Public Affairs
Manager of the board, Mr Kwesi Amenya said, "the Cocoa Research Institute
of Ghana (CRlG) has already started developing cocoa plants that are
drought-resistant as mitigations against some of these weather changes."
The said report was recently released by the Colombia-based
institution International Center
for Tropical Agriculture. The report explained that with average temperatures
predicted to increase in West Africa by more than one
degree celsius by 2030 and two degrees celsius by 2050, "many of the
existing cocoa-growing areas will become significantly less suitable for cocoa
production."
West Africa produces more than half
of the world's cocoa.
The findings of the report come at a time COCOBOD and its
stakeholders are patting themselves on the back for having attained a
production target of one million tonnes in the 2010/2011 cocoa season, two
years into the target year of 2013.
Although the report gave a 20-year period within which cocoa
production in the region will begin to fall, industry analysts in the country
fear the situation could cripple Ghana's rising production figures currently at
a little above one million tonnes.
"Why should we panic?" asked the COCOBOD Public
Relations Manager. "We do not know the plans of God regarding climate
change; things may get different along the line leading to the report's
projected years," Mr Amenya said.
But should the report's projections of "unsustainable
conditions" for cocoa productions by 2030 materialise, he added, "our
mitigating factors will insulate our farmers from any projected production
falls." Amenya explained that while the authors of the report assumed that
cocoa trees in the region were not planted under shade, the situation in Ghana
was contrary as farmers are constantly encouraged to plant their trees under
shade.
"What this means is that Ghana
as a cocoa producing country has an upper hand as far as the negative effects
of rising temperatures on cocoa are concerned," Mr Amenya claimed.
He, however, admitted that rising temperatures resulting
from harsher climatic conditions were a threat to cocoa production in the
country. "And that is a worry to COCOBOD because of its impact on the farmers,
government's ability to generate income and the economy at large," he
said.
Cocoa production currently accounts for 3.4 per cent of the
country's Gross Domestic Products (GDP) the monetary value of goods and
services produced in the country. Consequently, Mr Amenya said the board would
intensify its programmes such as reforestation, planting under shades and the
like. All are aimed at mitigating the possible effects of rising temperatures
on cocoa plantation.
