Bouafle, Ivory Coast, March 23 - Swollen shoot disease is slashing cocoa output from part of top grower Ivory Coast, and could reduce output more significantly if it spreads to major growing regions nearby, farmers and agronomists said.
The affected area, around the central towns of Bouafle and Sinfra harvested around 40,000 tonnes last season, a small part of the country's 1.3 million-tonne crop, but the adjacent Daloa region grows around a quarter of the country's cocoa output.
Spread by insects, swollen shoot is a viral disease that attacks cocoa leaves and shoots and can kill trees within two years. There are few treatments save ripping up trees and replanting.
"It is a disease that spreads very quickly. All you have to do is look at the damaging effects in Bouafle," state agronomist Michel Botti told Reuters.
"Signs of the disease were discovered at Bonon ... there is a risk that in two to five years we will see the disease in Daloa. This would be a catastrophe because a good part of production could be destroyed," Botti said.
Bonon is a town about 50 km (30 miles) east of Daloa on the main road to Bouafle, where farmers say swollen shoot has had a devastating effect on cocoa production over the past few years.
"Since 2004, the disease has infected most of the trees including those on my plantation. I used to produce 3.5 tonnes of cocoa per year, now I only produce between 100 and 200 kg per year," said Germain Dje Kouadio, a farmer in the Bouafle area.
Ivory Coast's October-March main crop has so far proved disappointing, and pod counters said this week the smaller April-September mid crop would produce only 200,000-290,000 tonnes, lower than the 350,000 tonnes many farmers had expected.
Worries over the Ivorian harvest have helped cocoa outperform many other commodities since the onset of the global financial crisis late last year. Benchmark U.S. futures <CCK9> for May delivery were up $3 at $2,594 per tonne on Friday.
Seydou Sorogo, deputy manager of Bouafle-based farming co-op Savannah Cooperation Zone, said the Bouafle-Sinfra area's 2007/08 season output of 40,000 tonnes was down from 70,000 to 80,000 five years ago.
"Every year, the amount of cocoa here lowers because we have not yet found a solution to the problem of swollen shoot," he said.
The National Agronomist Research Centre has recommended farmers plant hybrid seeds, which are more resistant to disease, but farmers say many of the new trees have barely lasted two years before being infected by swollen shoot.
Ivory Coast produces around two fifths of the world's cocoa, and many in the country rely on the crop for their livelihoods.
Last October neighbouring Ghana, the world's No. 2 cocoa grower, warned the spread of swollen shoot threatened government plans to raise output to 1 million tonnes in the next two seasons, from about 700,000 tonnes in recent years.
The Cocoa Swollen Shoot Virus Disease (CSSVD) control unit of Ghana's industry regulator Cocobod at the time declared the Esam district, a high yielding zone in Western Ghana, a "mass infection area", and said nearby Enchi was also badly affected.