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The Member of Parliament for Kwadaso, Dr Owusu Afriyie Akoto, has expressed reservations about the comments President John Mahama made to the effect that he would make Ghana the leading producer of cocoa in the world again after the country was stripped of that enviable �title� by neighbouring Cote d�Ivoire. The ranking member of Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs Committee in Parliament described as a piece of propaganda the President�s public assurance that his government was putting in place measures to ensure that Ghana regains its status as the world�s number one producer of cocoa. He said the President�s assertion that Ghana was doing well in the cocoa industry was nothing but an attempt to throw dust into the eyes of the public, stressing that the opposite was rather the case under President Mahama�s government. President Mahama was said to have commented that his government was putting in place measures to ensure that cocoa production increased for Ghana to regain its enviable position as the world�s leading producer of cocoa when he graced the fifth anniversary celebration of Cargill Ghana Ltd, a cocoa buying and processing company in Tema on Monday. The New Patriotic Party (NPP) MP was speaking to Daily Guide in reaction to the President�s comments on Ghana�s cocoa industry. According to Dr Akoto, the agricultural sector, under President Mahama, has suffered greatly with an unprecedented negative growth in the sector which has also seriously affected cocoa production in the country. He said under President Mahama�s government, cocoa production has reduced from 1,000,000 metric tonnes in 2010 to 800,000 metric tonnes presently. He said cocoa production was expected to decline further under the present government with the trend of affairs in the agricultural sector. �The mass spraying of cocoa introduced by President Kufuor which helped significantly to increase cocoa production in the country has now been thrown out of gear by the Mahama administration,� he said. Dr Akoto explained that there were six sessions of cocoa spraying exercise in a year under President Kufuor to control swollen shoot disease while three segments of spraying were also done in a year to control capsid and other diseases affecting cocoa, but under Mahama�s administration, the six sprayings to control swollen shoots have been reduced to four while the three sprayings for the control of capsid have also been reduced to one in a year. He said bags of fertilizers that were supplied to cocoa farmers under the hi-tech programme introduced by President Kufuor to help boost cocoa production have drastically been reduced under President Mahama�s administration. �Cocoa farmers were being supplied with 22.2 milliion bags a year under the hi-tech programme introduced by President Kufuor but now farmers are receiving just 500,000 bags a year,� he said, stressing that generally agricultural growth under President Mahama�s government has reduced from 7.5 percent in 2008 to just 1.5 percent in 2012/2013 which is not good at all for the nation�s agriculture sector. He said one thing that also helped to increase cocoa production from 350,000 metric tonnes in 2001 to 650,000 in 2004 under President Kufuor was the rising producer price for farmers. He said he could not come to terms with government�s decision not to increase produce price for farmers this year, even though producer price of cocoa on the world market had shot up considerably. �I don�t understand why the government could short-change poor cocoa farmers because apart from the rising producer price on the world market the cedi has also depreciated by 1.5 to 2.2 per dollar which means the dollar being used to buy our cocoa fetches the government more money and with all these favourable conditions how can the government tell cocoa farmers that they cannot increase producer price to reward their sacrifices and contributions they have been making to the cocoa industry in the country?� he wondered. �I want the civil society to stand up and help fight for these poor farmers who are being cheated by this government because this government is really an anti-farmer government,� he stated.