Cocoa Sector – Producers Seek Reduction In Pesticide Residues

George Mbella

7 June 2011

African cocoa producing countries have been told that cocoa consuming countries in Europe, the United States of America and Japan have expressed their concerns regarding the health risks associated with the use of pesticides in cocoa production.

As a result, some of these countries have enacted sanitary and phytosanitary, SPS, legislative and regulatory measures to stop importing cocoa beans with pesticide residues and other harmful substances.

This was during the opening ceremony of a four-day regional workshop named “COCOA SPS AFRICA” that started in Yaounde yesterday, June 7, to build the SPS capacities of African cocoa producing countries to mitigate the harmful effects of pesticide residues in cocoa and to maintain market access.

Organised by the International Cocoa Organisation, ICCO, with funding from the Standards and Trade Development Facility, STDF, the urgency for the workshop was justified by the crucial need to assist cocoa producing countries to strengthen their expertise and capacity to implement SPS standards, thus improving their ability to gain or maintain market access for their cocoa beans.

“For Cameroon, in particular, this is very critical because about 98 per cent of our cocoa is shipped to Europe,” said Michael Ndoping, the Managing Director of the National Cocoa and Coffee Board, NCCB, during his welcome address, before outlining measures so far taken by government and stakeholders to remove harmful pesticides from the market and sensitise farmers.

For Dr. Kenza Le Mentec of STDF, there is pressing need for multilateral cooperation to fight against cross border movements of illegal pesticides. A thought shared by the Secretary General at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Jean Claude Eko’o Akouafane who further stressed the importance of cash crops such as cocoa as principal pillars of agriculture-based economies, hence the need for main cocoa producers such as Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria and Togo to comply to the new rules on the quality of cocoa to avoid a disastrous situation for their economies.

To Dr. Jean-Marc Anga, the interim Executive Director of the ICCO, appropriate preventive measures had to be taken to maintain the level of dangerous substances from the use of pesticides.

“Africa continues to play a leading role in the cocoa market, accounting for 70 per cent of the global production with a 2,8 million metric tonnes recorded in 2009/2010,” he said. The workshop ends on Friday June 10.

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