A five-week long conflict in Ivory Coast threatens the 2002/03 cocoa output of the world’s top cocoa producer with many plantations neglected after immigrant workers fled their land, analysts said.
About 1 000 citizens of Burkina Faso, which has been accused by many on the government side of supporting the rebels, left the bush and took refuge in towns in the last two weeks fearing ethnic bloodshed in key cocoa regions.
More than 30 000 people have fled Ivory Coast for Burkina Faso since a failed coup on September 19, officials said.
”What’s happening now in the plantations? Cocoa pods are rotting on trees and I fear crop losses,” a big exporter said.
Foreigners, including more than three million Burkinabe who form the backbone of the cocoa workforce, account for around a quarter of Ivory Coast’s 16-million population.
A French-based analyst said fungal pod diseases could spread on abandoned plantations. The effects of the disease had already been noticed in western and eastern Ivory Coast after crossing the border from Ghana, the third biggest producer.
”If a plantation is badly kept, weeds begin to overrun, the plantation is closing up and the humidity sets in,” he said. ”Persistent high humidity is favourable for the development of pod diseases.”
But the analyst added it was too soon to assess the impact of workers’ departures on the upcoming crop.
”We don’t know how many hectares are affected and if the crisis will last,” he said.
Many traders in cocoa future markets said they were confident Ivorian beans would somehow get out of farms and be delivered to the ports. But the amount and quality of the crop is likely to be affected by the crisis.
The French-based analyst said spreading Phytophthora pod rot may result in a direct loss of crop in the key western region.
The more virulent form of Phytophthora pod rot made its appearance a few years ago in the east of the country which contributes six to seven percent of the country’s total 1,2-million ton production.
The analyst said Ivorian cocoa farmers had to spray their plantations regularly with copper fungicides to keep the spread of the disease in check.
They also have to weed, prune and remove rotten or affected pods from the trees to maintain their plantation in good health.
Buyers said some cocoa beans delivered at ports over the past few days were humid and rotten. In some cases, rotten beans represented 25% of the total, an abnormal level at this stage of the harvest.
”It shows that farmers are not spending enough time to take care of their plantations and their cocoa,” said a buyer in the town of Soubre, north of the main San Pedro port.
”It’s a bad sign for the crop,” he added.
The amount of beans reaching Ivory Coast’s ports of San Pedro and Abidjan has dropped steadily, partly because of roadblocks set up by villagers all around the western cocoa belt.
Vans carrying cocoa bags can take between three to four days to reach the ports from the western cocoa belt — a one-day trip in normal times.
As a result, the quality of cocoa beans was deteriorating even further, analysts said. – Reuters