The Federal Government has distributed the first batch of 3.6 million seedlings of high-yield cocoa varieties free to farmers for this year’s nursery season at Owena village near Owena village, Ondo State.
The distribution was supervised by the South West Regional Director, Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Dr. Julius Odeyemi, on behalf of the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina.
Odeyemi explained that the exercise was part of efforts aimed at improving the country’s cocoa production capacity.
He said the country dropped from being the second largest in the world, when it accounted for 20 per cent of global cocoa production, to its current distant fourth position with an abysmal 250,000 metric tonnes, and only five per cent of the world output.
He further said the first batch of the hybrid pods were expected to be reproduced by farmers to form the seedlings of the next generation of high-yield cocoa plantations.
He said they were provided free to the beneficiaries with counterpart funding from the cocoa-producing states.
Odeyemi noted that the production of high-yield and early maturing varieties was approved by the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria.
He said it was “part of the agricultural transformation agenda of the Federal Government, which was being done in partnership with all the cocoa-producing states in the country.”
The minister said with the high-yield seedlings planted in cocoa farms across the country, “the era of government neglect of the agricultural sector is over.”
He said, “Nigeria has a history of a prosperous, viable and vibrant cocoa industry in the past. The cocoa industry provided us with foreign exchange and revenue, which built for us our enduring infrastructure, institutions and edifices.”