Ivory Coast adapting farming to climate change

World top cocoa grower Ivory Coast is researching ways to maintain output from the wide range of crops it produces amid rainfall levels it says are decreasing due to climate change, state researchers have said.

Farmers in Daloa in the centre-west said drought-like conditions, which lasted for months earlier this year and killed younger cocoa plants, were the worst in living memory.

Rains have been good in the cocoa zones since late March when the tropical country's rainy season began, but cotton farmers in the arid north say rains they were awaiting in June, to enable their seeds to germinate, failed to arrive on time.

"Crops' water needs are less and less satisfied," said Brou Kouame, agro-meteorologist at the National Agronomic Research Centre (CNRA). "For the cotton in the north these last few years, the sowing periods are less respected. Harvests are late and there are serious insect problems. There is a prolonged drop in cocoa output in some zones," he said.

Experts have proposed the development of plant species more resistant to dry conditions, shifting sowing and harvesting periods according to weather conditions, irrigation, and planting of perennial producers such as rubber.

"We can't stay here doing nothing. Since we can't change the climate, we can adapt our agriculture to the climate," said Amoncho Adiko, head of research at the CNRA.

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