Good news is pouring in from plantations in Ivory Coast, the west African country is racking up record harvests for cocoa and cashew nuts of which it is a top global producer. New policies aimed at "modernising agriculture" and "making it more competitive" are bearing fruit and at the same time providing a bigger income for farmers, said Siaka Coulibaly, the chief of staff to the agriculture minister.
At the beginning of October the government proudly announced a record cocoa crop for a market that has been boosted by growing demand for chocolate in Asia. Ivory Coast is the top producer with 35 percent of global cocoa output. The 1.74 million tonnes of cocoa harvested in the 2013-2014 season beat the previous record of 1.51 million tonnes set in 2010-2011.
Cocoa planters have benefited from consistently favourable weather on top of gains from the planting in recent years of a new variety of cocoa tree, known as Mercedes, which offers a yield between twice and three times as high as that of old weary trees., noted Edouard N'Guessan, director general of the national Coffee and Cocoa Council.
Government spokesman Bruno Kone was already looking forward to promising results in the coming season, 2014-2015.
In the cashew nut sector, the harvest has far exceeded the primary objective of "preventing the deforestation of desert areas", according to Malamine Sanogo, who is in charge of production nation-wide.
The 550,000 tonnes of cashew nuts harvested this year are again a record. Sanogo claimed that it would be "very easy" to double production and snatch the global lead away from India "within five years".
Ivory Coast has in 2014 even seen a record crop of cotton, totalling 400,000 tonnes, which is twice the output achieved five years ago, but the country remains a minor player in this sector compared with others.
The sole dark patch in a glowing picture arises from sluggish coffee production of 100-120,000 tonnes, an amount four times lower than in the 1990s, when Ivory Coast ranked third among global producers.
After those glory days, Ivory Coast endured a long decade of political and military crises, including a rebellion that effectively partitioned the country for eight years and hit the economy in agricultural zones. Thousands of people were killed during these troubles.
In November 2010, veteran economist and politician Alassane Ouattara won a long-postponed presidential election, but the outcome of the poll was violently disputed by followers of the incumbent Laurent Gbagbo, at the cost of some 3,000 more lives until Gbagbo was arrested in April 2011.
Ouattara's government is "setting up (...) a powerful machine" to rule and reform, according to Coulibaly, who argues that the improvements in agriculture are "the logical outcome of reforms".
Comments
Comments are closed.