Long Spell of Supply Deficit Imminent As Industry Neglects West Africa’s Battle with Disease
West Africa is fighting a painful and long-drawn-out battle against cocoa diseases, the most lethal being the Cocoa Swollen Shoot Virus Disease (CSSVD).
Others, such as Phytophthora pod rot, also known as black pod, are perennial fungal infections reported during the rainy season and spread by rain splash.
Black pod disease may affect pods, flowers, young vegetative shoots, stems and roots of cocoa trees.
Infection is managed by pruning farms to allow for sunlight and, in addition, by applying copper-based fungicides.
However, for CSSVD no treatment exists as of now. Symptoms of the disease may differ depending on the strain.
Leaf discolouration, stem or root swelling, and die-back are some of the most common symptoms.
The Cocoa Swollen Shoot Virus is transmitted from one tree to another by mealybug vectors and was first discovered in the Gold Coast (now Ghana) in 1936.
Within one year of infection, farm productivity is reported to drop significantly by 25%, and falls further by 50% by the second year.
Infected cocoa trees will be rendered unproductive by the third to fourth year and eventually killed.
Between 1989 and 1993, Ghana took on
In 2017, a survey commissioned by the Ghana Cocoa Board revealed over 315,000 hectares of the West African nation’s 1.9-million-hectare cocoa tree stock were infected.
Experts say the virus is spreading like wildfire, with conservative estimates putting the extent of devastation to more than 400,000 hectares.
Thousands of cocoa farming families in Ghana have lost their farms and livelihoods to the current wave of the CSSVD ‘pandemic’ across West Africa.
SOT – Farmer
SOT – Farmer
Indeed, this is not the first CSSVD outbreak experienced by the world’s second-largest cocoa-producing country. However, it does appear to industry watchers as the most unforgiving.
In the 1980s, the Ghanaian government procured over $127 million African Development Bank-led multilateral loan to rehabilitate diseased farms.
cocoa swollen shoot virus disease control over 17,900 hectares of existing plantation.
Its specific objectives were to (i) increase cocoa production to give an annual output of at least 300,000 tons per year by year 1995; (ii) increase foreign exchange earnings from cocoa export and (iii) reduce rural poverty and improve quality of life in the cocoa growing areas.
The Cocoa Swollen Shoot Virus Disease was effectively controlled. There was uprooting of affected trees on 16,537 hectares and replanting of 3,810 hectares.
1) low price so less maintenance and lack of workforce e.g illegal mining or other crops pay more
2) climate change … more rain, more humid which is ideal for the disease such CSSV
Since the discovery of this important disease in Ghana, it has been managed through the “cutting out and replanting system” with the aim of removing sources of inoculum from affected cocoa plantations and replanting with tolerant cocoa hybrids
