Enabling African cocoa growers to sustainably continue producing and exporting their cocoa is the target of a project being conducted in Central and West Africa by the France-based Centre de coopération internationale en recherche agronomique pour le développement (CIRAD.) The creation of a regional network of researchers working hand-in-hand with growers is the keystone of the operation.
Global demand for cocoa is rising. Ghana and Ivory Coast account for almost 60% of world output. But maintaining African production levels may prove difficult in future, since cocoa is currently grown extensively rather than intensively. As a result, yields fall as the plantations age, compounded by lack of fertilizers and increasing parasite pressure. Once the soils in an area are degraded, farmers move on to the last remaining forest areas.
As accessible forest resources run out, cocoa production in West and Central Africa is likely to fall. Yet with 4.5 million hectares of cocoa, the sector provides a living for huge numbers of rural inhabitants in Africa; as many as six million people in Ghana alone. It is also a major source of foreign currency: in Ivory Coast, cocoa accounts for 30% of the country's total exports. Unless a viable agronomic alternative can rapidly be transferred to smallholders, the economic and social situation in these cocoa-growing zones may eventually become critical.
In response to this challenge, CIRAD researchers and their partners opted to set up an African research network. It comprises 35 researchers from 32 research and development organizations in the leading five cocoa-producing countries in Africa : Ivory Coast,Ghana, Togo, Nigeria and Cameroon.
The researchers, technicians and growers involved have primarily worked along four lines : improved cropping systems, participative breeding of cultivars either tolerant of or resistant to the diseases that affect cocoa, protection against pests and diseases, and soil fertilization.
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