Cocoa production in the world's No 4 grower Nigeria is likely to rise by 20 percent in the 2005/06 year due to favourable rains, farm reactivation and some new planting, the head of the Cocoa Growers Association of Nigeria (CGAN) said on Friday. CGAN National President Joseph Akomolafe told Reuters that he expected output to climb from 250,000 tonnes to 300,000 tonnes.
His figures for baseline production are higher than those used by the Cocoa Association of Nigeria (CAN), which estimated last year's crop at 200,000 tonnes. CAN also forecast steady production for the coming year.
But the growers' association expectation of a substantial increase was backed up by testimony from farmers visited on a trip to the top producing state of Ondo this week.
"In view of the ongoing rehabilitation efforts, our projection is that Ondo alone should produce about 120,000 tonnes next year, while national output should average 300,000," Akomolafe told Reuters in the Ondo state capital.
Nigeria launched a national cocoa development programme last February aiming to regain its former status as the world's No 2 grower by raising production to 300,000 tonnes next year and 600,000 tonnes by 2008.
The national cocoa rebirth programme, which was introduced about two years before its official launch, involves subsidising agro-chemicals and supplying improved seedlings free to farmers who are also encouraged to rejuvenate long abandoned farms.
Akomolafe said the programme's impact and favourable weather conditions would lift Ondo's output to around 120,000 tonnes in the coming year from 90,000 tonnes previously. The south-western state accords for roughly 40 percent of the country's total production.
Harvesting of this year's main crop is expected to start in about two weeks.
Akomolafe said the discrepancy in the figures could be due to smuggling to other West African countries. "Because of the porous nature of our borders, Nigeria's high quality beans are smuggled to neighbouring countries where they are mixed with low grade cocoa and sold to unsuspecting buyers," he said.
The CGAN national president attributed the dearth of reliable cocoa production figures to the absence of a national body to collect and collate data before the setting up of the National Cocoa Development Committee in 2003. Until then, the statistics were collected individually by each of Nigeria's 14 cocoa-growing states.
Agriculture was a major foreign exchange earner for Africa's top oil producer in the 1970s when its cocoa output peaked at around 400,000 per annum. But the government began to overlook the sector with the advent of oil and the decline was accelerated after Nigeria deregulated the cocoa industry in 1986.