Cocoa output in Ivory Coast, RI trappers off
Cocoa output in Ivory Coast, RI trappers off
ABIDJAN (Reuter): Cocoa output in Ivory Coast, the world's top producer, could fall as it runs out of the tropical rain forest which farmers have traditionally cleared to provide land for new holdings, according to a crop researcher.
The cocoa boom in Indonesia, seen as a future top producer, could also falter due to other environmental factors such as crop pests, Francois Ruf, a Jakarta-based researcher for France's CIRAD tropical agriculture Institute, added.
"The supply of cocoa seems very dependent on the clearance of tropical forests and seems to change within countries and continents," he said in a paper presented in Abidjan last week.
"Cocoa booms are explained above all by massive forest clearance associated with powerful migration currents like those in Sabah and Sulawesi," Ruf said.
Ruf said Ivory Coast has maintained its position as top producer by new forest clearances, but there was now little exploitable forest left.
The country had 12 million hectares in 1960 but now has only around 2.5 million hectares, according to an African Development Bank (AfDB) environment profile. "Ivory Coast has the highest rate of deforestation in the world," it said.
Ruf said forest reserves were also under serious pressure from cocoa planters.
Cocoa farmers slash and burn forest themselves or move on to land which has been commercially logged.
In Ivory Coast, the area of greatest cocoa production moved from the east to the center and then to the south-west as land for first-time cocoa planting was used up.
Ruf said older cleared areas were less fertile, had less available water and more weeds, insects and disease. Production costs were 100 percent more for replanted cocoa than for cocoa planted on newly cleared land.
"Ivory Coast probably follows in part Ghana's model (of) replanting which give much lower yields than the original plantations," the researcher said.
"However, the political and economic climate should mean (Ivorian output) will fall less," he said.
Indonesia
Indonesia's production boom has been very powerful because of very high yields of up to two tons a hectare, he said.
This compares with 700 kg a hectare during the Ivorian boom and 550 kg a hectare here now.
"It is not completely impossible that Indonesia will become the world's biggest cocoa producer in place of Ivory Coast in the 21st century, but the recession could be equally rapid under the effects of attack by insects, particularly pod borer," Ruf said.
"Very high yields stress the production system and contribute to shortening the life of the trees and therefore the supply cycle."
Original Indonesian crop estimates for 1994 have been cut to 295,000 tons from 350,000 tons because of drought and insect attack, an Indonesian Cocoa Association official told Reuters.
Pod-borer was a serious problem, he said. The larvae burrow through the husk and cause calluses which affect bean formation.
Ivory Coast, acting as spokesman for the Cocoa Producers' Alliance (Copal), has urged Indonesia to join the group to allow better control of the world market.
However, the Indonesian government thus far has not made any decision.
Cocoa prices on the London commodity market last Tuesday fell to 924 pounds a ton, their lowest level for six months, before ending the week at around 934 pounds.