News in brief: Recent heavy rains in Ivory Coast key cocoa producing regions have caused flooding, preventing farmers from accessing their plantations. The continuous rainfall and lack of sunshine increase the risk of disease spread, potentially impacting the next planting season.
Farmers in Ivory Coast’s top cocoa producing regions said that plantations were flooded because of rains that were above average mid-June, a Reuters report said. They added that the flooding has prevented them from going into their farms.
For the country, rain is not unusual around this time and its rainy season runs from April to the middle of November. However, the rains have been coming too close to each other, giving little to no time for periods of sunshine. Without sunshine, there is the possibility of diseases spreading.
The weather reports say that there was 206.3 millimeters (mm) of rain in east Abengourou which is 153 mm above its previous five-year average. The region has an agricultural vocational training institute that specialises in local cocoa and coffee production. It was the same situation in other regions of Ivory Coast.
Besides the lack of access to crops for maintenance, there is a fear that the flooding could disrupt the next planting season as well.
“It is not good here, showers come one after the other. Farmers can no longer go to the fields because rivers have broken their banks and there is flooding,” Arsene Kouao, a farmer in Ivory Coast said.
However, it is not all bad. Another farmer, in Bongouanou, where rain was around 72.8 mm a week ago and 42.8 mm above the usual rainfall, said that the weather has been good for cocoa in August and September. Although, he added that it depends on sun coming out soon.
