The Golden Cocoa Growers’ Association of Nigeria at the weekend in Ilorin urged government at all levels to revive cocoa production in the country to salvage the prevailing economic crisis.
Briefing newsmen after its national meeting, Moses Aliwa, the President of the association berated abandonment of farming in country since the discovery of oil, urging government to ensure that the youths are encouraged into farming particularly cocoa, so as to save the country from the current economic mess.
He said, “We want government to assist us by giving us little grants and loan that would attract youth to come into cocoa farming. We also want government to get us genuine chemicals that can be used in cocoa farming.”
Aliwa, who decried the inability of the farmers to get market for produce, added, “We want government to help us source for market where we shall be selling our product to the outside world.”
Also speaking, Umogbai Benji, a trustee of the association urged government to make improved seedlings available for the cocoa farmers in the country, noting that the old cultivated seedlings would not give the right percentage of production.
He said there are varieties of cocoa that can mature and produce fruits within 18 months, to replace the old ones that had been planted for long and thereby becoming ageing.
“We want government to make it possible for reactivation and establishment of cocoa gardens close to the farmers.
“If every grower is sure of a good cultivation from cocoa seed garden, he will plant and be expecting a good harvest and not a question of planting and harvesting irrelevant; that will be a waste.” he added.
The member of the association’s Board of Trustee (BOT) also advocated for an inclusion of cocoa drink into the school feeding programme of the Federal Government, stressing the need for Nigerians to eat what they produce, and emphasised also that other countries in the advanced world were not joking with cocoa products like chocolate and cocoa drinks.
In his briefing, Tunde Arosanye, who is a member of the BOT, described lack of appropriate price mechanism by the government as an impediment to youth engagement in farming.
Arosanye, who is also the former chairman of the Kogi state chapter of the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), explained that farming was not attractive in Nigeria like in the European countries because farmers sold their produces below production cost, unlike in the advanced world, where farmers could get optimal profit for their production.
“That is why you see people jumping out of farming after two to three years because profit is not coming as expected.
“This is because government has not put in place appropriate price mechanism to ensure that there is premium price if a farmer produces and he is not able to get market.
“What is government going to do? That is why we talk about off-taker, where government buy from farmers instead of allowing his produce to waste.” he said.
He urged government to recruit the youth and place them on stipends over a period that their farm produce would get into maturity.
He, however, advised the youth to embrace agriculture as a thing that could save the economy of the country and as well guarantee their employment.
“Agriculture has been what has sustained this country before oil discovery. Food has been the sustenance of man after the air we breathe in.
“We think food; we talk food and any nation that cannot feed herself cannot claim to be a sovereign nation,” he said.
The farmers asserted that agriculture was versatile and pitied the amount of money the government was spending to import food items, blaming it on the economic crisis of searching for foreign exchange.
He concluded that government would not have any business in importing rice and fish, among others, if an enabling environment was created for the youth in agriculture.
