Ivory Coast's Cocoa Management Committee (GCFCC) plans to spray 775,000 hectares of cocoa trees against pests for the 2011/12 season starting in October, up from 500,000 hectares this season, a top GCFCC official told Reuters on Thursday. In an interview, Boloba Silue, the head of the GCFCC's cocoa producers' development fund, said a campaign of treatment to ensure plantations are protected against insects and fungal black pod disease would start in the next two weeks.
"There are more pests (this season). We're facing swollen shoot and black pod disease and insects are ravaging farms." In total, 2.5 million hectares of the country's land surface is covered with cocoa crops. Normally around 1.5 million of that gets some kind of treatment, whether from the GCFCC or farmers themselves. Ivory Coast has enjoyed a bumper crop this year. Cocoa arrivals to ports in the world's top grower have surged ahead of last season's by 24 percent - reaching 1,365,000 tonnes by July 31, exporters estimated this week, compared with 1,100,607 tonnes in the same period of the previous season.
But farmers say heavy rains, a lack of sun and excess humidity are a worry this rainy season and may spur diseases such as black pod, which will hurt yields for the 2011/12 crop starting in October. Ivorian cocoa yields are already amongst the lowest in the world - less than 500 kg per hectare compared with 2 tonnes in Indonesia and 1.5 tonnes in Ghana, thanks largely to a lack of protection against diseases.
"Last season there were 500,000 hectares treated, but this year we are expecting to be able to treat 775,000 tonnes with fungicide and insecticide to improve the quality of production and eliminate pests," Silue said. He added that the government had set aside 3 billion CFA francs ($6.5 million) for the programme. He said the optimal time to start spraying was last month, but because of Ivory Coast's violent political crisis, which shut down cocoa exports for three months, everything had been delayed.