Ivory Coast cotton output continues post-conflict recovery

Ivory Coast expects to beat its 2011/12 cotton harvest of 260,000 tonnes to achieve about 340,000 tonnes in the 2012/13, according to a Reuters report.

Subsidized fertilizer and firm prices are some of the incentives for the increased planting and production.

Ivory Coast is gradually working its way back to the 400,000 tonnes per year it used to achieve before civil war broke out 10 years ago, the worst of the conflict finally ending with the coming in of a new elected government in 2011.

Renewed recent political tension and localized armed violence could yet endanger Ivory Coast's recovery in important sectors like cotton and cocoa.

African Agriculture 

Some Ivorian farmers abandon cocoa to cultivate rubber trees

An increasing number of farmers in Ivory Coast are leaving the perceived difficulties of cultivating cocoa, the country's main cash crop, to instead grow rubber trees, which are considered to be a more secure source, less troublesome source of income.

This is according to a news report by Reuters, which says the cocoa industry hopes that reforms currently underway assure better prices for the crop's farmers will help stem the tide to cultivating alternative crops.

Liberia is the African country most often associated with rubber, but Ivorian rubber production reached an all-time high of 234,000 tonnes in 2011, from 183,000 tonnes in 2007.

An Ivorian rubber industry group said rubber was grown on 318,000 hectares of land in 2011, compared to
304,000 hectares in 2010. An additional 15,000 hectares of rubber trees are to be planted in 2012.

The Singapore-based International Rubber Study Group said the Ivory Coast had a plan to achieve 600,000 tonnes of rubber by the end of 2020, for which planting would have to be in place by 2013.

African Agriculture

The news report says for some farmers, rubber trees are seen as a safer bet than cocoa. They provide a more regular monthly income than seasonal cocoa, and rubber prices are more stable.

Some farmers are said to be cutting down their aging cocoa trees to replace them with rubber seedlings. An cocoa to replace the country's old cocoa bushes with new plantings that are higher yielding and more pest-resistant is underway. But whether this will slow the trend of farmers diversifying to rubber will depend on cocoa prices.

 

Olam International to invest $202 million in Ivory Coast cashew, cocoa, cotton

by Baudelaire Mieu

Olam International Ltd. (OLAM plans to spend 100 billion CFA francs ($201 million) on Ivory Coast investments including two cashew factories and a cocoa- processing plant.

The agricultural commodity trader based in Singapore has just opened a cashew factory with 30,000 tonne capacity in the central town of Bouake, the first of three planned in the county for coming years.

Olam also plans to invest 30 billion CFA francs in a cocoa- processing plant in the western town of San Pedro and double cotton growing in the north to 50,000 hectares (123,500 acres).

Ivory Coast’s cashew output grew to 350,000 tons in 2010, according to the latest data from growers’ group Intercajou.

Bloomberg

Climate change effects on West African cocoa may be coming true much earlier than predicted

A study conducted by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) that was released in September 2011 predicted that in 20 years time climate change could result in conditions that could seriously jeopardize cocoa cultivation in two key growing countries, Ghana and Ivory Coast, which account for more than 50% of global production.

Among other things, the study hypothesized that “an expected annual temperature rise of more than two degrees Celsius by 2050 will leave many of West Africa’s cocoa-producing areas too hot for chocolate.” But it warned that as early as 2030, when annual temperatures are expected to have gone up by one degree Celsius, many of today’s main cocoa-growing areas could be unsuitable for the crop.

The report then went on to suggest a number of coping strategies.

At the time of the report’s release, many people found it somewhat alarmist. Ghana’s Cocoboard was reported to have downplayed it, saying it was confident it had things well in hand for a climate change eventuality.

Yet less than six months after the release of the CIAT report, many of the worrying climate change events which were predicted for many years hence seem to have already hit some of the key cocoa-growing areas, especially in Ivory Coast.

While Ghana is celebrating having produced more than a million tonnes of cocoa in 2011, Ivory Coast’s present cocoa-growing season has been plagued by late-starting and erratic rains with long in-season dry spells that are expected to result in a harvest 8% lower than that of 2011.

It could be a downward blip that could be compensated for by good seasons in coming years> But the signs suggest that it would be prudent to begin to make preparation for the future with the assumption that this year’s unusual-for-Ivory Coast climate is a sign of things to come. It may turn out that the CIAT prediction of a significant climate effect on cocoa harvest by 2030 was not alarmist, but actually optimistic.

Cocoa is so important to the economies of Ghana and Ivory Coast that there is understandable resistance to contemplating a future in which it has a much reduced role, especially when there are no obvious cash crop alternatives to take its place. Besides, it is also tempting to dismiss Ivory Coast’s poorer than normal season as a localized event; especially since rain seasons have been largely normal in cocoa-growing regions of Ghana and Nigeria.

Yet examples from elsewhere in Africa point to adaptation needing to be done with even more urgency than even the experts have warned was necessary.

If the economies of Ghana and Ivory Coast are too dependent on cocoa as a cash crop, many countries in eastern and southern Africa are too reliant on maize as a staple crop. To an even more alarming extent than cocoa in West Africa, these regions have failed to heed the yearly signs that maize-growing is already becoming increasingly unsustainable over an ever-increasing proportion of their climatological zone. The various strategies currently employed to deal with this are unlikely to completely bridge the gap between rising maize needs and declining production.

Alternatives to maize will have to be sought, difficult to fathom or accept as that reality is for many people in these maize-obsessed regions. During Malawi, Zambia and South Africa’s recent string of maize ‘bumper harvests,’ the very suggestion that a future of reduced importance for maize may need to be urgently thought about would have seemed crazy. It probably still does, even as these three countries and several others contemplate possible maize deficits in the next few months. But ready or not, that is a reality that all these countries are going to have to face, perhaps not just ‘soon,’ but now.

Similarly, the reduced Ivorian cocoa harvest is probably a more realistic base from which to think about the crop’s future in West Africa than Ghana’s record harvest in 2011.

All three major West African cocoa-growing countries are taking steps to replace their aging cocoa bushes with newer, ‘improved’ stocks. This has long-needed to be done and will address some of the challenges of declining intrinsic productivity. But like GM maize in the increasingly-unsuitable parts of eastern and southern Africa, this may slightly postpone the day of reckoning for the cultivation of these crops, but not put it off indefinitely.

The problem is these are all approaching realities that no one wants to hear or think about.

African Agriculture

Political unrest and drought endanger Ivory Coast cocoa output

Political unrest in the Ivory Coast, where 40 per cent of the world’s cocoa beans are grown, has ‘significantly’ depleted the number of certified fair trade cocoa farmers. Many have fled the West ­African country, while fair trade training programmes have also come to a halt because of the danger farmers face in rural areas.

The situation is already affecting chocolate manufacturers, who are facing the highest cocoa prices for over 30 years. Prices jumped by 10 per cent this month alone. Analysts are predicting they could soon hit $3,720 per metric tonne - a level last seen in January 1979.

more...Daily Mail

Meanwhile, Reuters reports that lower than normal rain and hot weather in late January may also cocoa Ivorian reduce yields

Farmers, who need abundant rainfall and spells of sunny weather to grow cocoa, the main ingredient for making chocolate, said the long dry spell had killed many young trees.
African Agriculture

State cocoa board established in Côte d’Ivoire

The government of Côte d’Ivoire has announced the establishment of a ‘state-controlled cocoa body’. This will bring under one body the functions of four current organisations, and will include international marketing of the cocoa crop. Marketing activities are likely to commence in early 2012. By engaging in forward selling, the new cocoa body ‘aims to encourage certainty and stability in the country's cocoa industry, and help enhance the prosperity of growers’. However this could serve to flood global markets, given the scale of Ivorian cocoa production.

Analysts suggest that buyers may be wary of concluding forward contracts with an organisation without an established track record, in a country newly emerged from civil war and where political instability still threatens. It is maintained that the new body cannot simply replicate the experience of the Ghanaian state cocoa authority (Cocobod), given the well-established market presence of the latter.

With the establishment of an Ivorian state-controlled cocoa body, potentially scope exists for closer collaboration between the two major West African cocoa producers. This could include the area of marketing, with the experience of the Ghanaian authority being deployed to provide assistance to the newly established Ivorian body, in order to prevent its operations from undermining established markets. Such collaboration could also offer scope for coordinating policies on producer prices, thereby reducing cross-border smuggling of cocoa.

The impact of this decision on the short term (i.e. in 2012), could be a drop in world cocoa prices, as Côte d’Ivoire will be putting two crops on the market: the current 2011/12 crop, to be sold more or less on spot markets, and the forthcoming 2012/13 crop to be sold on the futures market. According to certain traders, this could lead to a drop on London futures markets to £ 1,400 a tonne.

Looking further on, if Côte d’Ivoire does want to compete on world markets and keep the lead, a reform is not only necessary but vital. However, the success of this reform depends on the pace of its implementation, which could be quite slow given what is at stake. One of the aims of the reform is to reduce the number of intermediaries between farm and export of cocoa beans (currently there may be up to eight) in order to reduce the costs and increase the overall efficiency of the cocoa supply chain, thereby allowing producers to capture a higher percentage of the sale price.

Small scale cocoa farmers face additional challenges such as replacing ageing trees, an issue that should be taken into account in the government’s wider efforts to reorganise the sector. This could build on recent initiatives such as the memorandum of understanding signed by Cargill and ANADER, Cote d'Ivoire's national rural development agency. This involves support to farmer training and farmer organisation and the distribution of 600,000 cocoa tree seedlings to help improve and renew existing cocoa farms. Such public–private sector partnerships could be multiplied to embrace a sector-wide rehabilitation programme.

Agritrade

Ivory Coast cocoa farms child labour: little change

by Humphrey Hawksley

Global chocolate companies have been told they have a moral responsibility to do more to stop children working on cocoa farms in West Africa.

A recent report commissioned by the US government found that more than 1.8 million children in West Africa were involved in growing cocoa. Many were at risk of being injured by machetes, pesticides or through other hazards.

The Ivory Coast exports nearly half the world's cocoa. After years of civil war, the new government says ending poverty and child labour is a priority and the chocolate industry must be involved.

"There is a moral obligation," said Gilbert Kone Kafana, minister for labour and social affairs. "The chocolate companies have a duty to engage with us. We need to build roads, schools, hospitals and social centres; anything that would allow Ivory Coast to progress. This development is necessary for farmers to have a good life, and it is in the interest of the industry to work with us."

The chocolate industry is worth more than $90m (£56.5m) a year, and more than 40% of people in the Ivory Coast live below the poverty line.

Ten years ago, under international pressure, chocolate companies signed an international protocol to stop the practice of dangerous child labour. They promised to "commit significant resources" and act "as a matter of urgency."

But the report by Tulane University in the US, found that the chocolate industry's funding since 2001 had "not been sufficient" and it needed to do more. Scarring work

The sight of children carrying machetes or pesticide equipment is common throughout Ivory Coast's cocoa belt. More than 800,000 children here are believed to do some form of cocoa-related work.

Under the present system, once sold to market, it is impossible to trace exactly where the beans came from - and whether or not young children are being forced to work to produce them.

The chocolate industry has sponsored some projects such as in the village of Campement Paul, near the city of San Pedro. In 2008 a small school was built, for which the villagers had to pay half of the $20,000 (£12,570) costs.

It can accommodate about 150 children. But the villagers say that another 400 in the community still have no school to go to.

The chocolate industry concedes that more needs to be done, but says that even since 2009 its programmes have helped hundreds of thousands of cocoa farming families and more than one million children. Last year, under continuing pressure, the chocolate industry signed another agreement - this time to cut by 70% the number of children working in dangerous conditions by 2020.

There is, though, some difference over the figures. The US study found that between 2001 and 2009, less than 4% of people in Ivory Coast's cocoa-growing communities had been helped by the industry's programmes, and about 33,000 children.

The chocolate companies say they have done much more. But the US Department of Labor, a signatory to the new agreement, backs the Tulane report, saying its figures are "credible and reliable."

If that is the case, even if the 2020 target is achieved, almost a quarter of a million children would still be at risk, harvesting cocoa for global chocolate companies.

BBC

Cargill to invest $3.25 million in Ivory Coast cocoa

U.S. agribusiness giant Cargill Inc said on November 11 it will invest $3.25 million in developing and expanding farmer training to support the cocoa sector in Ivory Coast, the world's top producer.

Cargill, one of the world's top buyers of cocoa beans, is expected to purchase 50,000 tonnes of certified cocoa from Ivory Coast farmers in the 2011/12 marketing year with payments totaling more than $9 million, the company said.

More than half of these payments go directly to farmers with the rest to be invested by the cooperatives to assist farmer members and build community facilities, it said.

The agreement "strengthens our ongoing commitment to help improve the farming practices and the livelihoods of Ivorian cocoa farmers, as well as support the development of the country's cocoa sector", Cargill CEO Greg Page said in a statement.

Earlier this year Cargill, which typically buys 15 percent of Ivory Coast's cocoa crop, stopped exporting cocoa beans as a disputed presidential election led to an export ban, European trade sanctions and civil war. Exports resumed in May.

Cargill said it was continuing to work with co-ops to reach its target of 100,000 tonnes of certified "sustainable" cocoa beans from Ivory Coast by 2015.

The company also said it has a partnership with ANADER, Ivory Coast's national rural development agency, to support farmer training and distribute 600,000 cocoa tree seedlings to participating co-ops.

Cargill also buys cocoa beans in Brazil, Cameroon, Indonesia and Vietnam. It markets Gerkens cocoa powders, chocolates including the Wilbur, Peter's and Veliche brands, and coatings, fillings, cocoa liquors and cocoa butters.

Reuters

Ivory Coast seeks chocolate fairness for farmers

by Eoghan Macguire

The world's chocolate makers may specialize in delivering a sweet taste but the government of the Ivory Coast is seeking to address what it sees as the bitter treatment of the farmers who grow the industry's raw materials.

The West African nation was the world's biggest cocoa producer -- which is the main ingredient in chocolate -- between 2009 and 2010, rearing some 1.19 million tons of the crop according to the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO).

Thanks to a mixture of price volatility, internal instability within the Ivory Coast and a lack of protection from speculators however, an ever smaller portion of the billions of dollars of annual revenue the industry creates finds its way back to the country's farmers.

While this set up may benefit cocoa buyers and chocolate companies, non profits such as the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI) have claimed that it forces farmers to pay low wages and encourages exploitative practices such as child labor.

But according to Sangafowa Coulibaly, the Ivory Coast's agriculture minister, central government efforts are now being made to make the cocoa production process fairer and more profitable for farmers.

"The profits made from the sale of cocoa have unfortunately not been beneficial enough to the farmers because of poor governance," he says.

Coulibaly highlights the fact that farmers receive around a 40% share in the price of the cocoa they grow. This, he claims, is not commensurate with the costs the process incurs and in the coming years he hopes to see this figure rise to 60%.

He also blames the country's former president, Laurent Gbagbo -- who refused to concede defeat in elections in October 2010, leading to a six month long standoff before he was finally forced from power by military force -- for slowing reforms that will benefit the country's cocoa growers.

Now that the political infighting is over and a new government in place however, Coulibaly says that changes will be made to ensure the long term viability of one of the country's most integral industries.

"Things can only get better," he says. "The political crisis is behind us -- the armed conflict is behind us. Ivory Coast has become a country that aspires to be stable," he adds.

The profits made from the sale of cocoa have unfortunately not been beneficial enough to the farmers

With the Ivory Coast contributing to roughly 40% of global cocoa produce alone, such clear intentions of creating a durable and equitable production process should be good news for the world's chocolate companies, as well as the country's cocoa farmers.

But while Coulibaly is adamant that the central government is genuine in its attempts to help farmers, his words are met with a wary skepticism by those at the sharp end of the debate.

Toure Dramane is a farmer and owner of a cocoa co-op deep within the Ivory Coast's rural hinterland. He says that unless real changes are made to ensure farmers are paid a fair price for their produce they will be forced to employ children and pay low wages, which in turn will create a variety of long term social and humanitarian problems.

"It's not our choice; it's imposed on us," he says of the price he receives for his cocoa produce. "We can't transform it. We produce it and we sell. We get the price that is imposed on us. We can't do it any other way."

Dramane says that promises of reform to make cocoa farming fairer and more profitable have been made many times before.

He cites a pledge made by the world's leading chocolate companies to help end child labor almost a decade ago. "[But] in ten years, nothing has been done at all" to address this issue he says, ensuring he remains suspicious about the new government's proclamations no matter how good they sound.

With previous broken promises in mind, Dramane adds that he will reserve judgment about whether conditions will be any different or fairer for farmers until he sees the price he receives for his next harvest.

CNN

Ivory Coast cocoa reform promises farmers 60 pct of price

by Ange Aboa

The government of Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa grower,on November 2 signed off on a cocoa reform plan whose core aim is to boost output and quality by giving the country's hundreds of thousands of smallholders a higher selling price.

"A minimum price of 60 percent of CIF (market price) will be guaranteed to producers of coffee and cocoa," Agriculture Minister Coulibaly Sangafowasaid at a news conference, adding the timetable for implementing the reforms had not been finalised.

At the moment Ivorian farmers have no guaranteed income from their cocoa, and have often complained that they are receiving too little from merchants in the countryside to reinvest in their plantations.

An effort to reform the sector by throwing out a decade of liberalisation has been held up by years of political instability in the West African state, including a brief civil war that followed November 2010 presidential elections.

The International Monetary Fund and World Bank have set cocoa reform as a key condition for debt relief.

Ivory Coast produced more than a third of the global cocoa crop in the 2010-11 season. The 2011/2012 campaign has already started and the government has said it should be seen as a period of transition for the reform.

The minimum guaranteed price plan will involve forward selling of a portion of the forecast Ivorian crop as well as a system whereby exporters and processors give advance indication of their purchasing needs.

"The practical arrangements and timetable for its implementation will be defined in consultation with industry players," Sangafowa said. He added that the export tax structure for cocoa would also be revised.

On top of staving off a forecast decline in production, Ivory Coast's cocoa reforms are central to President Alassane Ouattara's strategy to revive the economy following five months of post-election conflict that killed thousands.

The Ivorian cocoa industry is currently run by the Bourse du Cafe et Cacao (BCC) and three other bodies. The reform would put the sector under the management of a single body.

Reuters

Ivorian cocoa reform to impose buy quotas for exporters

by Ange Aboa

Planned reforms to Ivory Coast's cocoa sector will impose quarterly quotas on

exporters' purchases to prevent big players from using their dominant position to manipulate the market, according to the latest draft obtained by Reuters on October 14.

The reforms in the world's top grower, which supplies 40 percent of the world market, will also scrap individually negotiated tax breaks to some exporters with local grinding capacity. The export tax is 14.6 percent, but some exporters who grind beans into semi-finished cocoa products locally managed to negotiate a discount, which will now be removed.And it will require exporters to pay a 10 percent deposit on all cocoa purchases from the state, the document from the agriculture ministry says, though it does not give details on how quotas would be worked out beyond saying they would apply to all exporters.

President Alassane Ouattara's government is attempting to introduce sweeping reforms to the sector with the core aim of guaranteeing its hundreds of thousands of smallholders a minimum selling  price. However, nothing has yet been finalised. Officials involved in

the reform talks say the government hopes to publish a definitive reform  plan by next month before it is adopted. The reform will also need the approval of the World Bank to

enable Ivory Coast to secure much needed debt relief, which was delayed by a violent four-month post-election conflict.

The reforms will effectively end a decade of liberalisation, which critics say left farmers beholden to the whims of international commodity markets, creating uncertainty that discouraged investment in their plantations and left the industry in disarray. Exporters have raised some concerns about the draft plans relating to transport costs and quality controls.

The reforms will guarantee farmers a minimum selling price, bringing the sector more in line with the regulated industry in Ghana, the world's No. 2 grower whose cocoa farming is more efficient and delivers yields per hectare around double those of Ivory Coast.

Farmers will get at least half of the average export price for the season, including insurance and transport costs -- a price the state will establish by selling more than three quarters of the cocoa ahead of time in forward contracts. But it will also place limits each quarter on the amount of cocoa each exporter can buy, according to the document obtained by Reuters on October 14. The limit will be the same for everyone, the document says.

 “To prevent the abuse of dominant positions in the market, an

upper limit will be imposed to licensed exporters," the document says.

Regulatory officials say this will not affect big buyers such as Cargill and Archer Daniels Midland, which will still be able to meet their production needs. It will deter only speculators seeking to buy up cocoa to manipulate the price, they say.

In another section, the draft says tax reforms would "erase the tax advantage currently accorded by the state to cocoa grinders".

Ivorian officials complain that grinders are registering beans for processing to get the tax break but only using some of them, while others are still exported raw.

Exporters will have to pay a 10 percent deposit on forward cocoa orders in order to "guarantee the viability of the system," the document adds. "Each trader will pay the deposit 48 hours in advance," it says.

Ouattara wants reforms in motion as soon as possible. They were temporarily derailed by a violent power struggle between him and former president Laurent Gbagbo over a disputed election last November. They now are seen as the last hurdle to IMF and World Bank debt relief on some $3 billion of obligations.

Reuters

Crop diversification should be part of dealing with climate change threat to West African cocoa

Climate change may make many parts of West Africa too hot for the growing of cocoa by the year 2050, according to a new report by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT). The report predicts that the region will experience a one degree Celcius temperature increase by 2030, going up to 2.3 degrees by 2050.

More than 50% of global cocoa is grown by small holder farmers in Ivory Coast and Ghana, with Nigeria also being an important producer.

According to the report, ''Warmer conditions mean the heat-sensitive cocoa trees will struggle to get enough water during the growing season, curtailing the development of cocoa pods, containing the prized cocoa bean – the key ingredient in chocolate production. The trees are also expected to struggle as the region’s dry season becomes increasingly intense.''

Some of these effects are already being seen in marginal cocoa-growing areas, and are expected to spread.

Peter Laderach, the report’s lead author, is quoted as saying, ''These findings are severe but preparation is the name of the game. There is a lot that farmers, governments, scientists – and key players in the cocoa supply chains – can do to help protect and improve cocoa production. But these measures need to be implemented very quickly.”

Among those suggested measures are investments in improved irrigation systems, and scientific research into more heat-tolerant cocoa plant varieties. The report also predicts that the ideal cocoa growing areas will shift to higher altitudes, to compensate for the higher temperatures. However, Laderach points out that west Africa is mostly flat, making this is a limited solution.

Failure to save the cocoa industry would have devastating consequences because of its key role in the lives of farmers and the economies of the major growing countries.  

Africa has recently had experience with other once-dominant crops whose competitiveness has been lost or severely challenged, with disastrous results.

In many countries that grew cotton, the sector  maintains just a small portion of its former glory. Among the reasons are subsidies for cotton growers in major growing countries like the US, China and Brazil as well as lower productivity. Countries in southern and eastern Africa that are suitable for  growing a variety of crops shifted their emphasis to other crops, though the hotter, drier parts that were particularly suitable for cotton often did not find an alternative anywhere as lucrative. 

However, African cotton's problems are close to being perpetual crises in the West African countries where cotton is the main or a major cash crop: Burkina Faso, Benin, Chad and Niger. In these hot, arid Sahelian countries where cotton is as important to the economies as cocoa is to Ivory Coast or Ghana, there is no quick or obvious answer to the decline of the sector. Efforts to improve productivity (eg GM cotton) or seek alternative markets (e.g. organic cotton) are underway, but it is far from clear that they will significantly address the structural problems faced by cotton farming in West Africa.Yet there are no readily, easily available alternative 'cash crops' to cotton in these countries. This may be a slowly unfolding social and economic disaster unfolding disaster before us that no one has yet suggested a viable solution to.

In the relatively few countries that grow it, vanilla was at one time a type of 'white gold' like cotton once was in many others. Madagascar dominated the world vanilla market and sought to maintain that lead position by manipulating production levels to keep volumes produced and exported under control, and to therefore keep global demand and prices high. 

Madagascar's restricted vanilla exports made it possible for competitors with higher prices to find buyers and erode its market share. The overall high world prices for vanilla also kept demand lower than it might have been if the sector were fully 'free.' Madagascar's growing vanilla stocks and declining global position eventually contributed to a decline of prices and the sector, affecting growers in Uganda and other countries that had joined the once-lucrative vanilla bandwagon. Madagascar then instituted a comprehensive reform
of the vanilla sector, but it has never achieved the height of its peak in the 1980s. As in many economies that mainly depend on one or a few commodities, there were no easy alternatives for devastated vanilla farmers to turn to for their livelihood.

Then there is Africa's coming maize disaster, based on the unsustainable over-dependence of many countries on this increasingly Africa-unsuitable crop. If the CIAT cocoa projection has come as a shock, that cannot be said for climate change's effects on the growing of maize. For years African farmers have struggled to maintain already low maize yields. In addition to declining soil fertility has been added the reality of an increasingly maize-unfriendly climate.   

There is a scramble by different interest groups to sell their idea as the answer to this huge, continent-wide calamity-in-development. GM and hybrid maize of various claimed advantages (faster maturing, water efficient, etc) are the mix of solutions being offered. But regardless of how well any or all of these much hyped solutions work according to the parameter set by the promoters who have so much invested in them, no one is able to even guess if they will be up to the task of compensating for climate change-caused reductions in maize growing areas.

If that decline in maize-suitable areas is significant and cannot be offset by higher yields in the remaining maize-suitable areas, maize-preferring Africans will have to find something or other starch crops to 'prefer.' Experience over many previous instances of maize shortages all over the continent suggests that large-scale importation of maize is simply not a realistic solution.

The work of thinking of, trying and beginning to market those probably inevitably needed maize alternatives is too important to be left until the crisis gets much worse. It should start now.

A similar diversification urgency may be called for in response to the warnings about the likely effects of climate change on growing cocoa in West Africa. As the examples given here illustrate, it is far from certain that efforts to ''protect and improve cocoa production'' will be successful. Apart from the many technical, capacity and many other problems that plague African agriculture in general, no one can accurately predict the exact levels of the forecast temperature changes, nor their effects on the ability to cultivate cocoa.If both are more severe than predicted, the impact would be extremely serious for the global chocolate industry, but catastrophic for the countries and farmers affected. The examples of other once lucrative crops in other parts of Africa show, however, that those catastrophic effects may be far from easy to avoid.

Cocoa was an introduced cash crop that unlike many others has more or less consistently had an assured global market and good reasonably good returns even for the farmers who are at the bottom of the supply chain in terms of benefit per effort. It would be far from easy to find a crop with anywhere near the same combination of economic qualities. Yet if cocoa climate change-coping strategies in West Africa do not also at least include diversification away from over-reliance on this so far successful crop, economic disasters that have taken place elsewhere when the main cash crop collapses can be predicted.

African Agriculture   

Uganda’s cocoa exports look up as Ivory Coast falters

by Bamuturaki Musinguzi and Sharon Mushakamba

Uganda is projecting a 13 per cent jump in earnings from cocoa bean exports this year, riding on improved crop productivity and better global prices.

The Ministry of Agriculture last week said production is expected to reach 17,000 metric tonnes, up from last year’s 15,000 metric tonnes, an improvement that should push earnings to $51 million from $45 million.

“We plan to expand the cocoa growing hectares and also provide farmers with the required resources and technological knowledge in order to boost production levels from the current 15,000 metric tonnes to our target of 50,000 metric tonnes by 2016,” said John Muwanga Musisi, Agriculture, Animal Industries and Fisheries Minister.

Uganda cocoa exports have grown from 6,000 metric tonnes in 2004/05 valued at $8.7 million to 13,800 metric tonnes in 2008/09 worth $41.4 million.

Lack of awareness and low production are the two major challenges facing the sector, Musisi observed. “Not many Ugandans know that cocoa is grown in the country. The schools curriculum mentions that cocoa is grown in Ghana and Nigeria and not in Uganda,” he said.


“Uganda’s cocoa production is still too low to attract credible investors into value addition. If we are to sell intermediate products like cocoa butter or cocoa powder we would earn three times more than what we earn when we export raw cocoa beans. According to the potential investors our production levels are still low because their heavy machinery can’t run all year round on just 15,000 metric tonnnes,” Musisi added.

“Otherwise, Uganda is at an advantage over the other countries simply because we are at a higher altitude of between 1,100 ­and 1,300 metres above sea level compared with West Africa with an altitude of between 0 and 300 metres above sea level where humidity is high, attracting high infestations of diseases and pests,” he noted.

Cocoa was introduced in 1901 to reduce dependency on coffee as the main export for Uganda, increase foreign exchange and eradicate household poverty.

According to Mr Musisi, all cocoa producing countries including Uganda benefited from the recent chaos in Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cocoa bean producer, because the price per tonne shot to $3,700 from $3,000 worldwide. “Currently a tonne goes for between $3,000 and $3,350, which is still high,” he said.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, world cocoa production is projected to grow at a rate of 2.2 per cent a year, from 1998-2000 to 2010, compared with the 1.7 per cent growth during the previous decade, and reach 3.7 million tonnes.

During the same period, Africa’s share in the global production is expected to decrease slightly from 69 per cent to 68 per cent, while the share from the Far East is projected to remain at 18 per cent, Latin America and the Caribbean at 14 per cent. Africa is expected to remain the world’s leading cocoa producing area over the next decade, FAO adds. Production in Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cocoa bean producer, should grow by 2.3 per cent a year from 1.2 million tonnes of the base period to 1.6 million tonnes in 2010, and account for 44 per cent of global cocoa production due mainly to the increased foreign direct investment followed by the market liberalisation.

According to FAO, output in Ghana, the second largest cocoa bean producer in Africa, will grow from 410,000 tonnes in 1998 and 2000 to 490,000 tonnes in 2010, an annual average growth rate of 1.6 per cent.

The corresponding growth rate for the previous decade was 3.3 per cent. The lower projected growth rate over the next decade will result from the outbreak of diseases (such as swollen shoot virus, black pod and mirids), increased competition in the world market and low export prices.

In 2010, world grindings of cocoa beans, a proxy for world cocoa consumption, amounted to 3.6 million tonnes, reflecting an average annual increase of 2.1 per cent from 2.8 million tonnes during the base period.

Consumption will continue to be concentrated in developed counties, which are expected to account for 64 per cent of world cocoa consumption in 2010. Consumption in these countries is projected to increase at an annual rate of 2.2 per cent from 1.8 million tonnes during the base period to 2.3 million tonnes in 2010.

The East African

Heavy rains damage Ivory Coast cocoa

by Loucoumane Coulibaly

Heavy rains in Southeastern Ivory Coast have hurt the region's cocoa sector, hindering drying and fermenting operations and damaging key roads to market, farmers said.

The downpours come amid rising concern over bean quality in the world's top grower nation, after exporters said much of the 15,000 tonnes of beans arriving at ports last week was not suitable for shipment.

"It has rained too much. The roads are blocked, there are lots of floods and the farmers are having trouble working on the plantations," said Paul Essien, who farms near Aboisso, around 100 km (60 miles) east of Abidjan. "We need lots of sun in July, otherwise the quality will degrade sharply and diseases will appear. We fear a decline in prices in the coming weeks," he said.

Some 203.2 millimetres of rain fell in the Aboisso region last week, according to meteorologist readings.

Elsewhere in Ivory Coast, farmers said they had seen less rain and more spells of sunshine, easing their fears that damp weather would trigger disease on their plantations and interrupt drying and fermenting work.

But they cautioned that weather in July would be key to the outcome of the April-October mid-crop -- with too much rain spelling trouble for quality and pod development.

Ivory Coast's huge cocoa sector is recovering from the effects of a four-month crisis that followed a disputed November election. Farmers struggled to get their plantations back in order after many fled during the conflict.

Cocoa production volumes are running higher than last year at over 1.2 million tonnes this season, but quality has become a top concern since the onset of the rainy season.

Reuters 

Swollen shoot disease advancing in Ivory Coast cocoa belt

by Ange Aboa

Swollen shoot disease, which has hit cocoa crops in central Ivory Coast, is advancing west into the cocoa belt and researchers are still years away from finding tree varieties resistant to the virus, a top government scientist said on June 21.

Tiemoko Yo, director general of National Agricultural Research Centre (CNRA), said the disease had destroyed 80 percent of trees in the growing regions of Sinfra and Bouafle in the past four years, but was now spreading elsewhere.

Sinfra used to produce 45,000 tonnes a year and Bouafle 30,000 tonnes, before an epidemic of swollen shoot infected plantations in these central regions around four years ago, leading many farmers to give up cocoa and plant yams or rubber.

Though the western cocoa belt that produces the lion's share of output had been largely spared, Yo said farmers could no longer count on it being contained there.

Ivory Coast produces around 1.2 million tonnes of cocoa a year, around two thirds of global supply, and is expected to manage a bumper crop of 1.3 million tonnes this year, thanks largely to favourable weather.

Daloa produces about a quarter of national output and Gagnoa usually manages about 80,000 tonnes a year.

A liquidity crunch left many farmers unable to afford treatments for their crops against disease. Fighting in some areas meant plantations were abandoned completely.

As the rainy season comes, farmers are increasingly worried about seasonal pests like black pod disease or swollen shoot.

"For the past two years, we've been doing tests to determine which orchard varieties could be resistant to swollen shoot," Yo said. "But it will be at least three years before our tests give us a clear picture of the right varieties to use."

Reuters

Ivory Coast to increase cotton production

by Pauline Bax

Ivory Coast aims to boost cotton production to at least 200,000 metric tons in the current season by increasing the price paid to growers of the fiber by 26 percent.

Farmers will receive 265 CFA francs ($0.59) a kilogram (2.2 pounds) for premium-quality cotton in the 2011-12 harvesting season, Laurent Fihox, spokesman for Intercoton, the national association of cotton growers and ginners, said by telephone today. That compares with 210 francs paid in the season that ended last month, he said.

“By setting a good farmgate price for 2011-12, we are hoping to attract new producers,” Fihox said.

Ivory Coast produced 174,000 tons of cotton in the 2010-11 season, 15 percent below initial forecasts, according to Fihox.

“Production was not as good as we had hoped because of unfavorable weather,” he said. “There was too much rainfall in October and November.”

Harvesting of cotton, grown exclusively in the country’s arid north, typically peaks around November. Ivory Coast is the eighth-largest cotton producer on the African continent, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agriculture Service. The country is the world’s biggest grower of cocoa.

Bloomberg

Thousands of Ivorian cocoa farmers fear going home

by Tim Cocks and Ange Aboa

Thousands of cocoa farmers who fled their fields during five months of conflict in Ivory Coast are too afraid of ethnic reprisals to go home, and many fear their plantations are either looted or rotting.

Villages around Duekoue, a town encircled by rolling hills and tropical forest in western Ivory Coast, normally produce around 250,000 tonnes of cocoa a year -- more than a fifth of total output from the world's top grower.

But many now lie in ruins after a violent power stuggle between former president Laurent Gbagbo and his rival in an election, Alassane Ouattara, who now as president must contend with a deeply divided nation and a ruined economy.

Torched houses, demolished warehouses and piles of bricks litter the forested landscape.

Most of the farmers who cannot return to their crops belong to the Guere ethnic group. Traders estimate they produce a quarter of the cocoa grown around Duekoue, so up to 5 percent of total output may be lost if they remain in hiding.

Alexandra Ba, 51, fled his 12 hectare cocoa field with his wife and nine children when militimen claiming allegiance to Ouattara advanced on his village on April 17.

"They killed a lot of people. I saw my neighbour shot dead wiht a Kalashnikov in front of me, but I ran away," he told Reuters at a refugee camp in Duekoue that still houses 27,000 Ivorians, among whom the majority of the working age males are employed in the local cocoa sector. I can't go back to my field. I think someone has occupied it. The cocoa's just sitting there. I need to start harvesting soon, before rains come and spread diseases on the pods."

Now is a crucial part of the season, when farmers as well as harvesting should also be preparing for the next season by applying fertilisers and weedkillers.

Ivory Coast's cocoa industry, which feeds some 40 percent of global demand, was badly hit by the crisis, which only eased when forces loyal to Ouattara captured Gbagbo from his home last month, with the help of the French military.

EU and U.S. sanctions on Gbagbo and his aides, plus a call for a cocoa ban by Ouattara, effectively shut down exports for three months. The banking system collapsed, leaving cocoa traders with no cash to pay farmers.

The crisis also reignited ethnic and land tensions in the western region, where longstanding feuds erupted between migrants mostly from Ouattara's Dioula tribe and the indigenous Guere, seen as allied to Gbagbo, over rich cocoa-growing land.

Investors and cocoa traders are watching out for signs the crisis may have damaged the mid-crop, which runs from September to April, if some farmers failed to receive enough cash to treat their plantations or were too afraid to tend them.

In most parts of the country, cocoa harvesting has resumed -- or it never stopped -- farmers say. Cocoa arrivals to port are currently put around 13 percent higher than at this time last year.

At a plantation deep in the jungle, farmers sit by a pile of harvested pods and hack into them with machetes, collecting the beans in plastic containers. These Dioula say they feel safer since Ouattara's forces chased out Gbagbo's militias.

But Guere farmers in the region are mostly in hiding, many in refugee camps, from those same pro-Ouattara forces.

"The Allochene (migrant tribes) make up the bigger part of production, around 80 percent, so the impact of the loss of Guere supply isn't huge, but it's still not good," said Ima Moussa, treasurer of a cooperative handing 3,000 tonnes a year, as workers piled up and sieved dried beans behind him.

In the longer term, many Ivorians hope Ouattara will try to resolve Ivory Coast's festering ethnic and land disputes to prevent recurring conflicts that threaten cocoa production.

"I can't go back to my field: it's occupied by militias," said Guere Gilbert Tehe, 52, who fled his 4 hectare cocoa farm.

"I fear I will never sell my cocoa this year."

Reuters

Should Ivory Coast nationalize its cocoa industry?

by G. Pascal Zachary.


Now that Ivory Coast has rid itself of its criminal former president Laurent Gbagbo, Alassane Ouattara — the country’s new president — can get on with the task of governing this west African country, long known as an economic powerhouse. Ivory Coast’s world-class agricultural endowment is cocoa, and its farmers have historically produced the largest annual crop in the world.


Ten years of civil war, and electoral frustrations cost Ivory Coast its preeminent global position, which is now likely held by neighboring Ghana. In a well-reported article on the problems of Ivory Coast’s cocoa farmers, James North in The Nation argues that large European and American cocoa buyers, notably Cargill, ADM and the big Swiss firm, Barry Callebaut, are terribly “exploiting” Ivorian farmers. North, while admirably cataloging the abuses by brokers and dishonest middlemen in the cocoa value chain, proposes no solution to the problem, other than suggesting that Western consumers of chocolate ought to refuse to tolerate “this injustice,” implying that perhaps a consumer boycott would help.

Strangely, given North’s long history of reporting for left-wing and progressive journals, he makes no mention of a potential solution open to Ivory Coast’s government: the well-established practice, in Ghana, of having the state serve as the sole buyer and broker of Ghanaian cocoa. As the sole buyer, the Ghana Cocoa Board, an arm of the government, sets terms and prices for cocoa, and serves as a supplier of inputs and expertise for Ghana’s many cocoa farmers. Undoubtedly, the cocoa board penalizes some farmers because it pays prices well below the level of the world market. The Ghana government pockets the difference on the grounds that the nation should benefit as a whole from cocoa — and that farmers are receiving some benefits from a system that frees them from the Darwinian competition — dog eat dog — that James North insists undercuts and immiserates cocoa farmers in neighboring Ivory Coast.

There’s a long and tangled history to the political economy of cocoa in West Africa — too long and tangled to go into here. The relevant point is that Ghana’s form of state socialism once delivered poorer results than Ivory Coast’s liberal, free market approach, where farmers sold to whomever they wished and pocketed all of their winnings. With cocoa prices at record high levels, the market-oriented approach is failing Ivorian farmers, while rewarding those in Ghana, where the government possesses enormous leverage over the global cartel of cocoa buyers because of a shortage in this essential bean.

For Ouattara, the case for emulating Ghana is clear. Nationalizing cocoa could also be an instrument for bringing some sanity and equity to rural Ivory Coast. Ghanaian technocrats could assist in this process, and the two countries, working in concert, would amass even stronger market power over cocoa, perhaps leading to price increases. Exploitation of producers — virtually all of whom are farmers who work their own small plots of land — would decline. And the shattered Ivorian state would demonstrate a new avenue for delivering public goods to its strife-weary citizens. Networks of cocoa farmers would require direct assistance from the Ivorian state — in the form of fertilizers, storage services and other inputs. These networks could then be used to “piggyback” other social goods, such as education for women and children, health services, and even lessons in conflict resolution techniques.

The failure to imagine new possibilities in African politics often bedevils reformers who appear stuck in a rut, powerless to transcend old patterns of failure. Yet in the case of cocoa, alternatives are not idealistic but are working — right across the border.

Christian Science Monitor

Ivory Coast upsets hit banana growers too

It is not just the cocoa industry which has been disrupted by Ivory Coast's political turmoil, but banana operations too, Sipef revealed, as it revealed "severe" disruption to trade.

The instability fostered by the stand-off between Alassane Ouattara, who won Ivory Coast presidential elections in November, and Laurent Gbagbo, who refused to quit and was forced out earlier this month, had "disrupted" banana operations, Sipef said.

The plantation group's banana production fell 12.7% to 5,100 tonnes, while "both transport and export facilities were severely hampered, so that the fruits could not be delivered to our clients in Europe".

And Mr Gbagbo's overthrow as head of the world's top cocoa producer, if mid-ranked banana grower, had not yet brought a "normalisation of economic activities and export facilities".

"Hence the contribution of our banana activity will temporarily remain lower," Sipef said.

The setback was among a number that the Belgian-based group suffered in the January-to-March period, with wet weather in Indonesia depressing palm oil output at some plantations, although Papua New Guinea output notched up a 31% rise.

Indonesia tea production fell 17.0% to 625 tonnes "on a generalised lack of sunshine, that dropped to less than half of the average.

"This had a negative effect on the growth of green leaf."

A fall of 4.7% to 2,776 tonnes in rubber output was blamed on a timing issue at Papua New Guinea operations, which would prove only a temporary hiccup.


Nonetheless, with production set for a recovery later in the year - tea output is already "slowly coming back on track" - and prices set to remain firm, Sipef forecast an increase in profits this year.

The group has already sold 60% of its forecast palm oil production at $1,200 a tonne, including freight.

Tea prices ran, at $2,910 a tonne, 4.3% higher in the first three months of 2011 than a year before, also supported by industry production losses to dry weather in Kenya, the top exporter, and heavy rains in Sri Lanka.

Banana prices were, at $1,251 a tonne in Europe, up 23% year on year.

Sipef shares stood 1.4% higher at E70.51 in morning trade in Brussels.

Agrimoney

Indonesia, Ghana may fill cocoa void

by Neena Rai and Caroline Henshaw

The conflict in top cocoa producer Ivory Coast could prove a boon for Ghana and Indonesia as farmers in the second-tier producers step up to meet any shortfall in supply.

Dealers fear cocoa output from Ivory Coast may decline next year from a bumper 1.3 million metric tons this season as the fallout of a power struggle has hindered farmers' access to financing and displaced up to one million people.

But analysts say supportive government policies in other major producers such as Indonesia and Ghana may help to boost cocoa supplies and compensate for any reduction in Ivory Coast output.

"The Ivory Coast will need to take urgent steps to revitalize the longer-term supply prospects for its cocoa industry to meet growing global demand and, more crucially, to support a key aspect of its economy," said Sudakshina Unnikrishnan, a commodities analyst at Barclays Capital in London.

"Given structural weakness in the Ivory Coast's cocoa production outlook, a path is paved for countries such as Indonesia and Ghana, to fill the void," she said.

World cocoa markets are expected to post a surplus of 120,000 tons this year due to excellent growing conditions in West Africa, which supplies 70% of the world's cocoa, according to figures from the International Cocoa Organization.

A significant proportion of this is expected to come from Ghana, where farmers are on course to produce more than 850,000 tons of cocoa this year, according to Yaw Kuranchie, chairman of Ghana Cocoa Board, known as Cocobod. Cocobod is targeting annual production of more than one million tons in the next few years.

Indonesia, however, has had a poor crop year in 2010-11 due to heavy rainfall damaging output despite an increase in plantings. Dealers now estimate the country's output will be flat this year at 600,000 tons when the new crop hits markets in May.

Still, Jati Misnawi, senior researcher at the Indonesian Coffee and Cocoa Research Institute, said government policies are targeting production of more than one million tons a year over the next five to 10 years.

"The Indonesian government has launched two programs," Mr. Jati said. "The first, known as Gernas Kakao, is to increase the production and quality of cocoa. The second is to improve national grinding through export taxes."

Mr. Jati said the government's program to boost cocoa acreage by 150,000 hectares is already bearing fruit, with some of the fast-growing trees planted two years ago now producing beans. Indonesia has 1.5 million hectares of cocoa plantations, mostly in the eastern Sulawesi island, with an extra 10,000 to 20,000 hectares of additional production due this year.

"Government initiatives to replace ageing trees will see an increase in yields as well as planted area, allowing Indonesia to compete with Ghana, the world's second-largest producer," a report on Indonesian agribusiness from Research and Markets said.

The Ivory Coast conflict has driven world cocoa prices higher on worries about supplies, a situation that has already begun to reverse on news of the arrest of former president Laurent Gbagbo. But the decline in prices is unlikely to deter farmers.

"Should prices continue to hover around the $3,000/ton range, it's an extremely attractive level to encourage production outside of the Ivory Coast," Barclays Capital's Ms. Unnikrishnan said.

Barclays Capital projects the average annual benchmark price for ICE cocoa futures to hit $3,266 a ton in 2011. On April 7, the contract for May delivery on the IntercontinentalExchange settled up 0.8% at $2,999 a ton.

Wall Street Journal