Cocoa Price Cuts: Why should only farmers take the hit? – Cocoa Farmers Association questions
The Chief Executive Officer of CEO OheneCocoa processing company and Spokesperson for the Ghana National Cocoa Farmers Association, Nana Aduna II, has reacted to the government’s decision to cut cocoa prices by 28%, questioning why only farmers should take the hit while the salaries of COCOBOD staff remain unaffected.
According to him, there are several stakeholders along the cocoa value chain who could have shared the burden without doing “much damage” to producer prices.
“The reverse question we would like to ask is, why are only farmers taking the hit? When you look at the trajectory of our cocoa system currently, there’s the farmer, there’s the haulage system, there are the Licensed Buying Companies (LBCs), there is COCOBOD. So why is the farmer alone taking the hit?” he asked on Joy News’ AM Show on Friday.
He noted that the decision has forced several farmers to abandon projects tied to these monies after enduring months of delayed payments, adding that many farmers delivered beans as far back as October 2025 but are yet to receive payment following the government’s directive.
“First and foremost, the farmer was not paid for four months, and then on top of that you have hit the farmer with a reduction, a significant reduction of a GHC1000 per bag,” he stated. “So why isn’t the first thing a reduction of the salaries and stuff, the margins that the government makes by the same price amount?”
“Especially the COCOBOD staff, they dock their salaries, they should hold their salaries for four months, then we will have some justification and an even playing field to then hit us with something,” he said.
The Ranking Member on Parliament’s Food, Agriculture, and Cocoa Affairs Committee, Eric Opoku, earlier revealed that in the 2024/2025 crop season, COCOBOD spent GH¢2.64 billion on staff compensation alone, which further increased to GH¢3.53 billion for the 2025/2026 season.
“In 2023, cocoa production declined further to 655,000 but office expenditure did not decline. It increased to GH¢3.4 billion. So, are you growing the cocoa in the office or in the bush?” he questioned.
The Farmers Association Spokesperson pointed to what he described as a “structural weakness” that leaves farmers vulnerable to such “unilateral price adjustment decisions.”
“Because farmer groups have been made poor and weakened in voice over many years, it’s almost like there’s a very limited collective bargaining,” he explained. “If I would be a unionist in that respect, there’s very limited collective bargaining. So how do we fight back? What are the tools? How do we respond? Do we just put our hands behind our backs and say ‘okay,’ as they say in South Africa, ‘fooyabas’ [give up]?”
“Why should only farmers bear the brunt of the reduction? Why not cut staff salaries, especially at COCOBOD, by the same margin?” he asked.
His comments follow the government’s decision to reduce the prices of cocoa, dropping producer price per bag to GH¢2,587, as part of efforts to rescue COCOBOD from a financial crisis.
On Thursday, Finance Minister Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson explained that Ghana’s farmgate price of GH¢58,000 per tonne (about $5,300) became uncompetitive as global prices declined to around $4,100 per tonne, causing international traders to stop purchasing Ghanaian cocoa. This, he said, has left about 50,000 metric tons of unsold cocoa sitting at ports.
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