Complex Irrigation and Hybrid Seeds at Africa's Biggest Cocoa Farm in Ivory Coast
In central-eastern Ivory Coast, a cocoa plantation that will be Africa’s biggest, spanning an area equal to about 3,000 soccer fields, is taking shape.
Solea, a unit of Brussels-based KKO International SA, is developing about 2,000 hectares (4,942 acres) of land near Bocanda and is trying to secure another 1,000 hectares. The project in the nation that’s the world’s top cocoa producer is unusual, because 90 percent of its cocoa comes from family-run farms of 2 to 4 hectares.
“We want to shake things up,” Solea Deputy Managing Director Indranil Ghosh said as he was driven in a pick-up truck between lines of cocoa trees set to produce the chocolate ingredient for the first time this season. “Such a large area of irrigated and fertilized cocoa plantations doesn’t exist anywhere else in Africa.”
About 800,000 farmers grow cocoa in Ivory Coast using a limited amount of fertilizer and reaping beans from aging trees. The result? Yields of about 500 kilograms (1,102 pounds) of beans per hectare, half of those in Malaysia.
Manuel Ignacio