Ghanaian cocoa farmers are pushing back against a \u200cnewly passed law that restricts how they can use their own land, urging President John Dramani Mahama to withhold his assent until they have been properly consulted.<\/p>\n
The Ghana Cocoa Board Bill, 2026, \u200bwas approved by Ghana’s parliament in late July. It gives cocoa farms “protected” \u200bstatus and bars anyone, including farmers, from converting cocoa farms for \u2060other uses without approval from market regulator COCOBOD, except for board-sanctioned rehabilitation. Violators face fines \u200band possible prison terms of up to 20 years.<\/p>\n
The bill is aimed at curbing the \u200bconversion of cocoa land for mining and other crops, a trend that is contributing to Ghana’s declining cocoa output, with portions of cocoa farms nationwide cleared for rubber plantations and mining activities.<\/p>\n
Ghana \u200band neighbouring Ivory Coast produce half of the world’s cocoa.<\/p>\n
The Ghana Cooperative Cocoa Farmers \u200band Marketing Association Limited, an umbrella body for cocoa farmer cooperatives, said it supports measures to \u200cprotect \u2060farms but wants several provisions reviewed and better explained to growers before the bill becomes law.<\/p>\n
Its administrator, Moses Djan Asiedu, said farmers were especially concerned about land that had become commercially unproductive, and whether replacing cocoa with other crops in such places \u200bcould expose them to \u200bprosecution.<\/p>\n
“We agree the \u2060tree must be protected because that is the source of our livelihood, but we have critical situations where a farmer may \u200bhave to cut down a diseased farm and plant another crop \u200bthat will \u2060bring him or her income,” Asiedu said.<\/p>\n
The farmers’ concerns echo objections raised by minority lawmakers.<\/p>\n
COCOBOD has rejected the criticism. Jerome Sam, head of public relations, told local media the \u2060minority’s \u200bobjections were politically motivated and that the bill was \u200bdrafted to help farmers.<\/p>\n
Mahama has not yet signed the bill, nor has he given a timeline of when \u200bhe might do so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ghanaian cocoa farmers are pushing back against a \u200cnewly passed law that restricts how they can use their own land, urging President John Dramani Mahama to withhold his assent until they have been properly consulted. The Ghana Cocoa Board Bill, 2026, \u200bwas approved by Ghana’s parliament in late July. It gives cocoa farms “protected” \u200bstatus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":14944,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":10,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,2362,27],"tags":[3597,158,5400,2858],"class_list":["post-21761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economy","category-featured","category-west-africa","tag-cocoa-marketing-board-cocobod","tag-ghana","tag-ghana-cocoa-board-bill","tag-john-dramani-mahama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21761"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21762,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21761\/revisions\/21762"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}