The Executive Director of the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria (CRIN), Dr. Patrick Adebola has stated that the year 2024 will be a year of no regret for cocoa farmers in Nigeria as he will do everything in his capability to provide the necessary support for them.

Patrick who stated this in an exclusive interview with CEOAFRICA at his office also called on more individuals to join cocoa farming in Nigeria. The CRIN boss who had earlier disclosed that in the 2023, the institute recorded a great milestone in infrastructural development and research which gave them international recognition, noted that in 2024, the institute will continue to supply good planting materials for farmers, which is one of their mandates.

He stated that good planting materials such as cocoa, cashew, cola, coffee, and tea will be supplied to farmers and the institute will continue research also, to add value to some of their products.

Adebola said “in 2024, we will continue in this line of previous plans. We will continue to supply good planting materials for our farmers, that is one of our mandates, good planting materials such as cocoa, cashew, cola, coffee, and tea.”

“We will continue our research to look at how we can add value to some of our product so that it will enhance what we can get from it in international markets. We don't want to encourage our farmers to just be expunging raw beans, but we want to ensure that if it is possible, we will be processing the raw beans into either liquor or cake or butter, and adding this value to those our cocoa beans will enable our farmers to earn more money, to earn much of the needed dollars into our Nigeria economy.”

He continued that, “If you look at what cocoa is saying now in the international market, it's almost $6000 per bag, we have never had it so good, the evaluation of the naira as well as the scarcity of the commodity all over the world have made the prices of cocoa to soar, farmers are now smiling back. we are happy about this, and the farmers are happy about that.”

“We will continue to strive to make sure that we increase production to earn more money, much more of the needed foreign exchange into the country. Also, we had a plan of raining 1million cocoa seedlings from new improved varieties which we are going to distribute to our farmers, this will cover farmers in all the twenty-two cocoa producing states, right from here Oyo, Ogun up to Taraba and Adamawa, we have farmers there that are producing cocoa,” he said.

The ED who also expressed his excitement on the increase in Cocoa farmers in Nigeria, said though the demand is very high but in 2024, cocoa research institute is capable to supply the much-needed planting materials to farmers as they are already preparing the nursery to make sure that the demands of all of the farmers are met this year.

On the proposed plans for when people declare their interests and troop into cocoa farming, especially now that the Federal Government is positing Agriculture as the way to go in Nigeria, Dr. Adebola disclosed that all necessary plans have been put in place for more farmers that are willing and ready to go into cocoa farming,

According to him, “the prices of cocoa now is roughly about between $5800 -$6300 per ton for 2024 as compared to about $2300 that we had late in 2023, so the interest in people coming back to the farm establishing more plantation is there.”

“We have seen the number of re-occurrences before, some people have already come to the institute either for the establishment of new plantation or for the rehabilitation of some of the plantation that are more in board, those re-occurrences are already coming. We have about one hundred research scientists that are ready young minds and are ready to work. We have already mobilized them. We have already organized ourselves and we are going to deploy our human resources to be able to tackle this demand,” he expressed.

He also said “We are ready, our nursery has been well equipped. We have sunk a borehole and put all the necessary things in place to make sure that we meet the demand of our farmers. We are not using old materials, we are going to use all our new materials that are high yielding, that are early bearing and that will give expected yield to the farmers.”