ABIDJAN (Reuters) – Ivory Coast’s October-to-March main cocoa crop is expected to start early in most of the country’s growing regions, helped by recent drier weather, farmers said on Monday.
The world’s top cocoa producer is in its rainy season, which runs officially from April to mid-November. Rains are typically abundant during this period but last week were below average.
Farmers said the soil was still moist enough to allow cocoa trees to grow and that the dry spell was helping flowers to turn into small pods.
Farmers added that they were confident yields in the first half of the main crop, from October to December, would be better this year than last.
“The trees are full of berries. We’ll have a lot of cocoa in October this year compared with last year,” said Kouassi Kouame, who farms near the western region of Soubre, where 25.7 millimetres (mm) of rain fell last week, 2.4 mm below the five-year average.
Similar comments were made in the southern region of Divo, where rainfall was also below average, as well as in the southern region of Agboville and the eastern region of Abengourou, where rains were above average.
Farmers from those regions said plantations showed no sign of damage and the first beans of the main crop would leave the bush in September.
In the west-central region of Daloa and the central regions of Bongouanou and Yamoussoukro, where rainfall was below average last week, farmers said sunshine was boosting the crop.
“The sun is really helping the flowers and small pods to develop,” said Patrice Koffi, who farms near Daloa, where 8 mm of rain fell last week, 14.6 mm below the average.
The weekly average temperature across Ivory Coast ranged from 24.01 to 26.4 degrees Celsius.
(Reporting by Loucoumane Coulibaly; Editing by Anait Miridzhanian, Kirsten Donovan)
