SOUBRÉ, Côte d’Ivoire — “Dry periods never used to last this long before,” says Célestin Oura, a farmer in southwestern Côte d’Ivoire. “The dry season used to last a month at most. Now, it lasts three to four months, and the plantations are really suffering as a result.” Declining yields and rising production costs are […]
  • Farmers in a cacao-producing region of southwestern Côte d’Ivoire have seen their yields decline so much that they’re abandoning their plantations and considering switching to other crops.
  • They say cacao, long a mainstay of the agricultural economy of this region and the country, is no longer profitable due to changing weather patterns and an increase in plant diseases like swollen shoot.
  • An agronomist says the changing weather is partly due to deforestation caused by the expansion of cacao production in recent decades, and recommends agroforestry and reforestation as a remedy.

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