East New Britain used to enjoy the days of cocoa flush and its benefits and the title of being the leading cocoa producing province in the whole of PNG. The days when simple village people have money to spend!! It also made history with the incursion of the cocoa pod borer in one of its blocks outside of Kokopo. From producing 25,000 tons per year, ENB production did not drop immediately following the CPB in 2006. Instead it enjoyed a relatively great few years until last year when production fell to an all time low at just 4,000 tons per year. Im not sure if our leaders are aware of these figures but the latest statistics from the PNG Cocoa Board showed that ENB produces just 11 per cent of the total PNG cocoa. Thats way behind East Sepik at 32.2 per cent, North Solomons at 31.8 per cent and Madang at 15 per cent. PNG produced just over 39,000 tons in the last cocoa year, a 1 percent contribution to the Worlds cocoa demand (it used to produce over 2 percent). It would be interesting to see how we finish of the year. I know a number of private and public sector intervention programs are in place to recover cocoa volume and the national government through the DAL pushing to revive the industry with an aim to produce 300,000 tons in 2030....its just frustrating to see simple things not being taken care of...for example, the education on the amount of pesticides and insecticides used in smallholder blocks to manage CPB, how much is enough, or how much is too much? Simple farming extension services...Or the improvement of roads leading to the markets...providing shipping etc...Heart breaking to see bags of cocoa coming into Kokopo from remote Pomio villages. The bags cost a fortune for a villager to bring to Kokopo only to find that the quality of beans are so poor he cant even make enough money to go back home!!
Posted on: Tue, 30 Sep 2014 06:42:45 +0000
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