Ghana wants to increase its cocoa growing by 30%

Ghana's government has doubled its budgetary allocation for supplying fertliser to cocoa farmers for the 2008/09 crop starting this month, an official at the Cocobod cocoa regulator said.

 The world's
second biggest producer aims to raise its cocoa output to 1 million
tonnes a year by 2010, from an average of 670,000 tonnes over the
past four seasons.

"A key component of the strategy
toward the 1 million target is to encourage farmers to shift from
traditional to high-tech production, through increased fertiliser
application," said an official.

The budgetary allocation for fertiliser
had been doubled to 65.5 million cedis (56.3 million USD) for the
2008/09 crop, the official said.