The Managing Director of Solidaridad West Africa, Mr Isaac Gyamfi, has urged Ghanaian cocoa farmers to approach the cultivation 
of cocoa with a strict business sense and not merely as a farming activity.
He said if farming was looked at as an occupation, farmers would become motivated to take good care of their farms as profitable business ventures with or without government support. In that way, he added, they stood to gain maximum financial benefits from agriculture.
Mr Gyamfi made the recommendation when Akuafo Adamfo, a cocoa-purchasing company, paid over GH¢1 million as ‘premium’ to cocoa farmers at a ceremony at Ashanti-Bekwai in the Ashanti Region. Premium payments are to reward farmers who engage in certification. The payments are aside the usual amount paid normally for cocoa purchased and other bonuses. An amount of GH¢8 is paid as premium for each cocoa bag received.
Currently, Akuafo Adamfo, in collaboration with Solidaridad and Ecom, is assisting 8,335 farmers to practise certification. Certification is the standardised process where cocoa farmers are trained to practise sustainable agriculture and engage in sound environmental practices. It involves the protection of the farmer and the environment and application of methods for increased cocoa yield through sound utilisation of fertiliser and insecticides.
Farmers under certification were each also given quantities of farming implements including machetes, in addition to the cash.
Solidaridad works on creating sustainable supply chains from the producer to the consumer.
Waiting for government
Mr Gyamfi, a cocoa farmer, discouraged farmers from sticking to the old ways of farming and relying on the government to provide them with inputs. He added that farmers who idly looked on lost their farms when the government failed to supply them with inputs.
He said farmers who took farming as a serious business venture were the ones making huge profits.
Interestingly, during question and answer time, none of the over 500 farmers indicated that they wanted their children to take up farming.
Mr Gyamfi attributed this lack of interest of farmers’ offsprings in farming to the seeming unprofitability of cocoa farming.
Akuafo Adamfo
The Managing Director of Akuafo Adamfo, Mr Antoine Boudib, described the payment of premium as “the company’s commitment to reward hard-working farmers who have been enrolled in the certification project”.
