He said illegal mining, popularly known locally as galamsey, had become a serious threat to the cocoa industry, ruining cocoa farms and polluting water bodies.

Mr Mumuni, who was addressing a regional cocoa farmers rally at Begoro last Friday, stressed that the demise of the cocoa industry could spell doom for the economy.

He advised cocoa farmers to make judicious use of farm inputs, particularly, chemicals supplied to them by COCOBOD and to account for them as well, cautioning them that they should neither misapply nor divert the chemicals.

Operational areas

Mr Mumuni enjoined the farmers to cooperate with community extension agents in all operational areas to adopt and implement all programmes by COCOBOD since they were geared towards assisting them to increase production.

He encouraged them to regularly prune their farms by removing excess and diseased branches, mistletoe and mummified pods to reduce the incidence of diseases and to increase yield.

He said COCOBOD had assisted farmers through the provision of motorised slashers, fuel and lubricants to facilitate the pruning exercise.

He reiterated that the mass spraying exercise was now mandatory, while only pruned farms would benefit from the free foliar fertiliser gesture by the government.

Cash injection

The Executive Director of the Cocoa Health and Extension Division (CHED), Rev. Edwin Afari, said the cocoa industry remained important to the country, stressing that the industry injected $2 billion annually into the national economy.

He said the CHED would this year work to get closer to cocoa farmers through training programmes and sensitisation to enable them to increase productivity.

Rev. Afari admonished farmers to strictly adhere to and implement good agronomic practices and new technologies developed by the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana in order to harvest 10 bags of cocoa per acre instead of the current three bags per acre.