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President John Dramani Mahama has announced plans to distribute over 50 million improved cocoa seedlings to farmers across the country.

The farmers will receive the seedlings for free from the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) as part of the government’s efforts to improve cocoa production in the country.

President Mahama made this known Thursday when he delivered the 2015 State of the Nation address to Parliament.

He said 4000 people in 87 cocoa growing communities had already planted the seedlings and were nursing them.

On the welfare of farmers in the cocoa sector, he said the producer price of cocoa had gone up by 62.74 per cent from Gh₵3392 per tonne to GH₵5520 per tonnne.

The President stated that the COCOBOD’s free fertilizer application programme for farmers would continue in the 2014/2015 season.

He said on the occasion of his second anniversary in office on January 7, 2014, he spent the day at Assin Senchem in the Central Region on the farm of Samuel Tobi, a young cocoa farmer, and his “enthusiastic young friends, who had all taken to cocoa farming”.

“I felt encouraged that there is an emerging young generation of cocoa farmers who will take over from the older generation,” he said

President Mahama went on to add that he had requested COCOBOD to unveil a programme to acquire land to engage more young people in cocoa farming.