Cocoa farmers in the Kadjebi district at an outreach sensitization workshop on Friday cited the lack of cash, delayed payments and the unavailability of produce purchasing officers as compelling factors responsible for the smuggling of the commodity.
They said they were constrained by those factors to sell to the commodity to Togolese agents who are always ready to pay for even wet cocoa beans.
The farmers lamented the politicization of the cocoa spraying exercises, which they said would not augur well for the cocoa sector.
Mr Emmanuel K. Addo, Kadjebi District Chief Cocoa Farmer, entreated government to adopt the arrest and prosecute policy as a measure to stem cocoa smuggling across the country's frontiers.
He said it was wrong for cocoa farmers to resort to smuggling after enjoying all the largesse from government in the form of mass spraying of cocoa farms, bonuses and other incentive packages.
Mr Addo suggested that the availability of records of sprayed farms should be exploited to demand social auditing and accountability from farmers.
Nana Adjei Karikari, Akwamuhene of Ahamansu, blamed produce buying agents and clerks for complicity in the smuggling business.
He said the distribution of single-barrelled guns among cocoa farmers has been fraught with irregularities and favouritism and called for fairness and equity.
He said the unavailability of agricultural extension officers, delayed services, and the absence of timely instruction in the cocoa sector was a major disincentive, and called for redress.
Mr Alfred Nortey, Deputy Director of the Volta Regional Cocoa Swollen Shoot Virus Disease (CSSVD) Control Unit of Ghana Cocoa Board, said cocoa which is the country's major export earner, has no political colour and therefore urged the spraying gangs to refrain from politics in the discharge of their duties, for the attainment of the one-million-ton target by 2012.
Mr Nortey appealed to the farmers to continue to sell their produce to buying agents irrespective of the prevailing difficulties, to motivate government to provide the basic necessities, rather than boosting the economies of neighbouring countries through smuggling.
He appealed to the residents of the region to re-establish cocoa farms, which ranked it the third countrywide in the 1970s, and to maintain good agronomic practices to boost yields.
Mr Owusu Mensah, Jasikan District Officer of CSSVD, urged cocoa farmers to be vigilant about the swollen shoot disease, which manifests in the visible swelling of stems and roots of cocoa trees, as well as the blackpod disease.
He maintained that destruction through cutting and burning was the only method for treating infected farms.
Mr Mensah said the cash element in the destruction of farms or cocoa ex-gratia of 160 Ghana Cedis per hectare, and 240 Ghana Cedis per hectare for replanting still holds.