Cocoa Farmers Association of Nigeria (CFAN), has raise the concern of the quality of Nigeria cocoa bean, saying Nigeria cocoa may be ban from the international market if nothing is done urgently.
National President of CFAN, Comrade Adeola Adegoke, raised this concern recently at the launch of the Association’s office in Abuja
According to Adegoke, CFAN is working with stakeholders in the industry to improve the quality and quantity of Nigeria cocoa bean.
He said the association is working on ensuring that Nigeria surpasses the production capacity of both Ivory Coast and Ghana in the next five years.
This will be done through a sustainable cocoa production to grow the nation’s foreign exchange earnings and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) respectively, CFAN said.
Adegoke said activities to be performed to increase the production capacity will be the launch of Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), training book for the smallholder cocoa farmers among others.
He said the target is to push the country’s cocoa production from the current 250,000 metric tons to 500,000 metric tons in the next two years with the best and finest cocoa premium quality in the world.
He said: “Our focus as a nation is to surpass the production and productivity capacity of both Ivory Coast and Ghana in the next five years through a sustainable cocoa production where we will have a more realistic largest cocoa pyramid in the world in Nigeria to grow our foreign exchange earnings and GDP respectively.
“We raised an alarm on the low quality of our cocoa beans and the need for our nation to brace up to change this narrative in order to prevent our cocoa from being rejected now and in the future or being sanctioned which could lead to the blockage of other opportunities that could improve the livelihood of our cocoa farmers in Nigeria.
“Against the above backdrop, hence the need for our association with other stakeholders to take a position among others to launch this GAP book in collaboration with Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria (CRIN), the Ecosystem Based Adaptation for food Security Assembly Nigeria (EBAFOSA) for achieving transparency and the sustainability of our cocoa supply chain taking to cognizance the protection of our environment and our biodiversity sustainably.
