The Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), regulators of the country's cocoa industry, has downplayed the findings of a new report on cocoa which suggests that cocoa production in the West African sub-region could fall by two per cent as a result of rising temperatures. While admitting that cocoa plants relied heavily on water for optimum yield, the Public Affairs Manager of the board, Mr Kwesi Amenya told the Daily Graphic that "the Cocoa Research Institute of Ghana (CRlG) has already started developing cocoa plants that are drought-resistant as mitigations against some of these weather changes." The said report, released by a Colombia based institution - the International Center for Tropical Agriculture - noted that an expected annual temperature rise of more than two degrees celsius will leave many cocoa-producing areas in West Africa "unsuitable for cocoa production". The report explained that with average temperatures predicted to increase in West Africa by more than one degree celsius by 2030 and two degrees celsius by 2050, "many of the existing cocoa-growing areas will become significantly less suitable for cocoa production." The West African sub-region produces more than half of the world's cocoa. The findings of the report come at a time COCOBOD and its stakeholders are patting themselves on the back for having attained a production target of one million tonnes in the 2010/2011 cocoa season, two years into the target year of 2013. Although the report gave a 20-year period within which cocoa production in the region will begin to fall, industry analysts in the country fear the situation could even cripple Ghana's rising production figures currently at a little above one million tonnes. "Why should we even panic?" asked the COCOBOD Public Relations Manager. "We do not know the plans of God regarding climate change; things may get different along the line leading to the report's projected years," Mr Amenya added. But should the report's projections of "unsustainable conditions" for cocoa productions by 2030 materialise, he added, "our mitigating factors will insulate our farmers from any projected production falls." He explained that while the authors of the report assumed that cocoa trees in the region were not planted under shade, the situation in Ghana was contrary as farmers are constantly encouraged to plant their trees under shades. "What this means is that Ghana as a cocoa producing country has an upper hand as far as the negative effects of rising temperatures on cocoa are concerned," Mr Amenya claimed. He, however, admitted that rising temperatures resulting from harsher climatic conditions were a threat to cocoa production in the country. "And that is a worry to COCOBOD because of its impact on the farmers, government's ability to generate income and the economy at large," he said. Cocoa production currently accounts for 3.4 per cent of the country's Gross Domestic Products (GDP) the monetary value of goods and services produced in the country. Consequently, Mr Amenya said the board would intensify its programmes such as reafforestation, planting under shades and the like are all aimed at mitigating the possible effects of rising temperatures on cocoa plantation. On Ghana's trend of falling cocoa productions normally trailing bumper harvests, Mr Amenya said "holding everything as it is now, production should fall but if interventions aimed at sustaining current production figures and new cocoa farms are cultivated, then that should mitigate any fall." Experience, he said, had shown that rising cocoa production in Ghana was normally followed by a fall "and the same could happen although COCOBOD is currently putting in place measures to mitigate these shortfalls." Mr Amenya explained that the seasonal nature of the cocoa tree and its need for "a rest after bumper yield normally leads to us experiencing a fall immediately after a good yield."