Côte d'Ivoire: Cocoa, the shared challenges between the two countries

Nieuwsbericht | 27-11-2023 | 13:31

The Netherlands is the largest cocoa processing country in the world, playing a major role in the various issues related to the sector, whether it be economic, social, agronomic, environmental or political. And in the Netherlands is based Wageningen University & Research, with more than 7,500 employees and 15,000 students, rated number one on the planet for its work specialized in food, feed and biobased production, natural resources and living environment, society and well-being.

These two factors - the importance of the Netherlands on the world cocoa scene and the importance of Wageningen in the field of research in agricultural and social sciences - easily explain the weight of the university's research work in the cocoa sector in Côte d’Ivoire, the world’s cocoa production leader. Wageningen has conducted research on cocoa to the value of more than 4 million euros over the past five years.

Wageningen researchers have been working on the cocoa sector for more than a decade, in all countries. Researcher Yuca Waarts, specialized in the development of sustainable value chains, remembers that her department's work on the income and poverty of cocoa farmers in Côte d'Ivoire started in 2008 while Ken Giller, professor and researcher at Wageningen Center for Agroecology and Systems analysis (WaCASA), has been working since 2016 on soil fertility, whereas Marieke Sassen has devoted her time since 2019 to the study of biodiversity and agroforestry.

Many of the research programs are carried out hand in hand with the National Agricultural Research Center (CNRA) in Côte d’Ivoire and the Coffee and Cocoa Council (CCC). “The CNRA has ongoing research with excellent specialists at the research station in Divo. It is a pleasure to work together. We have Masters and PhD students who work together with Ivorian scientists and students,” explains Professor Giller. This work is often part of consortia of research partners including major chocolate companies (Barry Callebaut, Mondelez, Nestlé, Olam, etc.), other institutes such as the sustainable trade initiative (IDH) or the Dutch Research Council (NWO), the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) as well as NGOs such as the Rainforest Alliance, which merged in 2018 with UTZ Certified.

These different partners will meet in January 2024 in Ivory Coast during the next international cocoa forum organized by Wageningen University & Research.

Boost yields

For Ken Giller, the equation is relatively simple: in West Africa, for the past twenty years or so, the average cocoa yield has remained stagnant at around 400 to 500 kg per hectare. “But we know that we can produce much more! Theoretically 4 to 5 tonnes (t) per hectare and, more realistically in West Africa, around 2 t per hectare”. This emerges from field trials carried out over the past five years to examine the long-term needs of cocoa trees and the nutritional properties of the soil. The experiments should last at least 15 to 20 years to cover the whole crop cycle.

Until now, the research carried out has been short-term, often on cocoa trees planted on cleared former forest lands or formerly cultivated lands where soils have degraded and become poorer over time. This new research on the long term aims at managing soil fertility in a sustainable way. “Our current trials reveal that different balances in the nutrient mix, good tree pruning, good agricultural practices, prevention of diseases and pests as components of good plantation management, make it possible to considerably increase yields without necessarily increase the cost of inputs. We have ongoing trials across Côte d’Ivoire together with CNRA and others that we are already sharing”, explains the professor. It is good news for the cocoa tree, the planter and the environment. Combined with good political governance and a good land policy, more production on less land should easily be reached, thus also responding to the demographic challenge.

That said, the researcher expresses his astonishment: “Despite the economic importance of the cocoa sector in Côte d'Ivoire, there has long been a shocking lack of coordinated research in this area and we are trying to remedy this with our work in Côte d'Ivoire but also in Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon as well as in Latin America and Indonesia. Thus, our work in Côte d'Ivoire is part of a global research network. “

Find entry points

If improving the soil fertility increases productivity on small cocoa plots, shouldn’t this ultimately reduce deforestation? “I don’t think it works that simply”, says Marieke Sassen. Soils are not everything. Farmers decisions on how they use available forest resources, including for land, depend on many different factors. Increasing productivity may also make it more attractive to expand cocoa further, including into available forested land. Yet, Côte d'Ivoire has also set itself the goal of achieving 20% national forest coverage by 2030 and aims to achieve this by reducing deforestation due to cocoa, transitioning the cocoa illegally grown in forest reserves towards agroforestry systems and promoting agroforestry in cocoa in the rural domain.

Cocoa agroforestry systems have the potential advantage that they maintain higher biodiversity than full sun systems and can increase resilience and diversified income sources to the farmer. In order to achieve these different goals, it is necessary to study where what type of cocoa production makes most sense depending on factors such as climate, soils but also household and national objectives.

It is therefore to these questions that Marieke Sassen devotes herself, which will help to prioritize different types of intervention. "For example, in degraded protected areas, you may want to give priority to certain interventions such as shade agroforestry, whereas elsewhere, you will want to favor a more intensive system depending on the agroclimatic conditions but also on the ability of the planter to apply the necessary management,” she says. “As government, you might want a higher use of inputs and/or shade and agroforestry but as a farmer or household you might not be able to do so. So, as part of our research work with the CNRA and our doctoral students, we try to find the different entry points for a change towards more sustainable systems from an environmental, social and economic perspective. “

Understanding barriers

Better understanding the blockages and which targeted policies (of companies, governments and NGOs) will significantly increase the income of cocoa farmers, eliminate child labor and protect forests, is through the research work also carried out by Yuca Waarts for various commissioners among which companies and the Rainforest Alliance, together with local consultants like EMC (Etudes de Marché et Conseils).

In this area, until ten years ago, little research had been carried out. “So, we started shedding light on possibilities and sometimes impossibilities of households growing their income from an entrepreneurial perspective -because the whole assumption behind agricultural innovations is that people can actually grow their income from innovating. But what we see, and this is our main results from the past few years, is that quite a large group of households are basically so poor that they are not able to increase their income in an entrepreneurial logic because their base income is too low. They prefer spending their available income on sending their children to school or buying food rather than investing in their plantation,” explains the researcher.

Yuca Waarts’ work also demonstrates that the assumption that one can substantially increase one's income through agriculture is not always true, when the market is not inclined to pay much higher prices. Hence the importance of developing alternative sources of financial income in rural areas, such as employment in areas nearby, or in providing services to farmers and households, and importantly also, developing social protections. “So, it is actually a problem for the wider economy and not for the agricultural sector alone, and even more so not for cocoa alone. This is the conclusion of 20 years of research on poverty alleviation. “

This underlines how important it is for research work on cocoa to be carried out within the framework of a “multi-perspective and multi-disciplinary” partnership, specifies Ken Giller, "And that all actors must act to drastically improve the situation such that cocoa farming households can and will flourish", adds Yuca Waarts.

This article is part of a series of article made in light of 6th edition of SARA 2023 with the Kingdom of the Netherlands as country of honor in Côte d'Ivoire.  This article is an interview of three  Wageningen researchers on the conclusion of their research on the cocoa challenges.