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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Ivory Coast
Index
Côte d'Ivoire ranked third in world coffee production
after
Brazil and Colombia. Introduced as a cash crop during the
colonial
period, coffee was cultivated throughout the forest zone,
with the
heaviest production in the denser forests of the east and
along the
margin of the forest moving westward from Dimbokro to Man.
The bulk
of the crop consisted of robusta varieties, which were
more bitter
and less expensive than arabica varieties and therefore
were used
in blends to reduce costs.
Coffee trees were started in nurseries. After about a
year,
before the rains in May, they were transplanted to
permanent sites.
After two years they were pruned to a maximum height of
two meters
to make harvesting easier, and they were kept pruned to
improve
yields. Trees began bearing at above five years and
continued to
produce for ten to twenty years. Trees flowered several
times
throughout the year; however, the main harvests took place
in
August and November through January. Yields averaged 250
kilograms
per hectare, or about 25 percent of the yields in Colombia
and
Brazil, where trees received better care. Following the
harvest,
the berries were hulled, peeled, dried, and sorted before
being
shipped or processed locally.
Prior to independence, production grew at a rate of 10
percent
per year. By the late 1950s, however, expansion slowed,
and between
1965 and 1984 annual coffee production averaged 252,000
tons. By
the mid-1980s, 60 percent of the coffee trees in the
country were
more than fifteen years old and producing well below
average
yields. Attempts by the government to encourage the
planting of new
coffee trees were largely unsuccessful, and production in
the aging
plantations continued to drop.
Data as of November 1988
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