Farmers in Cross River state, Nigeria’s second-largest cocoa-growing area, are fighting blackpod disease as rainfall increases in the southeast of the West African nation.
“The rain pattern is causing infection to crops,” Godwin Ukwu, a farmer and spokesman for the Cocoa Association of Nigeria, said in a phone interview yesterday from Ikom, the largest cocoa-producing area of the state. “Fungicides are helping farmers control the spread.”
Farmers in Cross River, which produces about 30 percent of the nation’s cocoa output, “are worried that more rains will make the disease spread faster and are being cautious,” Ukwu said. Blackpod fungus, which rots cocoa pods and thrives in wet, humid conditions, is the most destructive disease for the cocoa trees in the state, he said.
The harvest of mid-crop beans began in April, when bean weights were 270 grams (0.6 pound). That declined to about 250 grams due to the rains, Neji Abang, country coordinator for Socodevi, a Quebec City, Canada-based organization helping farmers in the country raise output and bean quality, said in an interview yesterday. “Farmgate prices for cocoa beans in Cross River fell to 445,000 naira ($2,720) a ton from 450,000 as crop quality dropped,” Abang said.
Nigeria’s cocoa production is estimated at 300,000 metric tons this year from 295,000 in 2013, Sayina Riman, president of the country’s cocoa association, said yesterday. Farmers in Cross River are pruning trees to increase access to sunlight and reduce the impact of the rains, Abang said.
Nigeria’s cocoa year is divided into two harvests. The main-crop season begins in October and ends in January, while the light-crop season, the smaller of the two, usually begins in April and ends in June. The start and end dates of the two seasons may vary each year depending on the weather.
Africa’s largest economy ranks behind Ivory Coast, Ghana and Indonesia as the world’s largest cocoa producer, according to the London-based International Cocoa Organization.