Last year the company paid GH¢19 million as premium.

As many as 120,000 cocoa farmers across the country are to benefit from the cash amount. Each farmer was expected to receive between GH¢16 to GH¢20 on each bag of certified cocoa sold to the company during the period.

Again, last year the company paid GH¢14 on each bag of cocoa bought.

Premium

The premiums, popularly known as bonuses, are paid to deserving farmers for selling certified cocoa beans to the company, based on premium grading by cocoa buyers on the international market.

The Country Coordinator of Agroecom Ghana Ltd, Mr Muhammadu Muzzammil, commended the cocoa farmers for helping the company to attain more than 70,000 tonnes of cocoa in the first half of the cocoa season.

Mr Muzzammil was speaking at a premium announcement durbar of chiefs and people of Antoakrom in the Amansie West District in the Ashanti Region to announced premium for cocoa for 2018/2019.
Present at the event were cocoa farmers from Goaso, Assin Breku, Breman Assikuma, New Edubiase, Sankore, Antoakrom and Asumura among others.

Mr Muzzammil, said the company would continue to offer its support towards efforts by stakeholders in the industry to creat value and improve the livelihoods of rural dwellers.

He urged the cocoa farmers to see cocoa farming as a business and thereby put in more effort to ensure that they get the best returns on their investment.

That, he said could be achieved by adopting prudent farming practices and management as well as record keeping practices in order to boost productivity and their earnings as well.

Collaboration

Mr Muzzammil said the company was liaising with all stakeholders in the cocoa industry to work at increasing farmers yield per acre as means of getting them to boost their income and that of the nation.

To this end, he called on all stakeholders to pool their efforts in terms of knowledge and resources since by doing so the cocoa industry stood the chance of improving the nation’s finances.

Mr Vincent Akomeah, the Director of Research at COCOBOD, commended Agroecom Ghana Ltd, for the role it was playing in the development of the cocoa industry in the country and urged other Licensing Buying Companies to also make a forceful contribution in that regard.

Caution

He cautioned cocoa farmers to desist from using weedicides on their farms since the chemicals were having a negative toll on the nation’s cocoa industry.

Mr Akomeah cited the high dosage of residual deposits of weedicides in cocoa beans that has led to reduction in the market value of the country’s cocoa beans on the international market.
He urged the farmers to adopt good farming practices in order to produce beans of high quality.

In an address read for him, the Paramount Chief of Manso Nkwanta, Nana Bi Kusi Appiah, appealed to the government to make sure that the agrochemicals for mass spraying of cocoa farms was not distributed on political lines since doing so favoured one political group against others.