MONGABAY.COM
Mongabay.com seeks to raise interest in and appreciation of wild lands and wildlife, while examining the impact of emerging trends in climate, technology, economics, and finance on conservation and development (more)
WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
|
|
Ivory Coast
Index
Log carriers waiting to unload at the port
Courtesy Robert Handloff
In the mid-1970s, the government undertook major
efforts to
diversify export crops and end its dependence on cocoa and
coffee.
In the forest zone, diversification products were palm
oil, coconut
oil, and rubber, all of which enjoyed a comparative
advantage on
the international market. In the 1980s, Côte d'Ivoire had
become
the largest palm oil exporter in Africa, and the 1987
harvest of
215,000 tons made Côte d'Ivoire one of the world's largest
producers. In 1985 an expansion program called for
planting 65,000
additional hectares of oil palms and constructing four new
industrial plantations. With some 15,000 hectares of new
plantings
each year, production was expected to continue its rise.
At the
same time, production costs in Côte d'Ivoire were high,
perhaps
reflecting the fact that individual holdings were small
and often
located on less productive land.
In 1987 Côte d'Ivoire's rubber production totaled
38,700 tons,
and there were plans to increase production to 80,000 tons
a year
by 1990. This increase would place the country ahead of
Liberia,
then the largest African producer of natural rubber. The
number of
hectares under rubber cultivation increased sixfold from
1960 to
1984, from 7,243 to 43,634 hectares.
In the north, or savanna zone, cotton and sugar were
the chief
diversification crops. Cotton was first introduced during
the
colonial period by the French Textile Development Company
(Compagnie Française de Développement des Textiles--CFDT),
which at
independence became the Ivoirian Textile Development
Company
(Compagnie Ivoirienne de Développement des
Textiles--CIDT). Cotton
became economically important only after independence. In
1965
there were some 12,000 hectares of cotton, and by 1979,
these were
123,000 hectares. Production leveled off in the early
1980s but
picked up again between 1981 and 1984. Cotton (fiber and
cottonseed) production in 1986-87 set a new record of
213,506 tons,
compared with (fiber and cotton seed) the previous
season's 190,000
tons and the country's previous record of 205,000 tons in
1984-85,
making Côte d'Ivoire the third largest cotton producer in
Africa,
after Egypt and Sudan. Cotton fiber production over the
same period
amounted to 91,000 tons (1987), 75,000 ton (1986), and
88,000 tons
(1985). Côte d'Ivoire exported about 80 percent of its
crop.
Côte d'Ivoire was Africa's eighth largest sugar
producer, with
a yield of nearly 144,000 tons in 1987, more than half of
which was
exported. Industrial sugar production began only in the
early 1970s
with the creation of SODESUCRE, a parastatal that
constructed and
operated six large industrial sugar refineries located at
Ferkéssédougou (Ferké I and Ferké II) and four smaller
towns in the
savanna region (By 1987 two of the factories had been
closed.) In
1982 these complexes contributed about 3 percent of the
agricultural GDP.
The colonial government introduced bananas for export
in 1931,
and by 1961 the fruit was the second largest earner of
foreign
exchange. The principal production areas lay between
Aboisso and
Divo. Exported varieties, which are larger and sweeter
than native
fruits, were harvested year round. French settlers owned
the first
plantations; by 1961 holdings by Africans amounted to
about onethird of the 6,500 hectares under cultivation for export.
By the
mid-1980s, the fraction in land or in corporations held by
foreigners dropped to less than 10 percent. Production for
1985
came to 163,000 tons, of which only 105,000 tons were
exportable.
In the mid-1980s, Côte d'Ivoire routinely fell short of
its
allotted export quota to Europe, in part because labor
shortages
adversely affected the quality of the fruit.
Pineapples have been raised commercially only since
1950. In
1961 less than 600 hectares were cultivated; Africans
owned
approximately one-half the area. By 1986, under the
impetus of
government encouragement and support, 438,000 hectares
were under
cultivation. Production amounted to approximately 250,000
tons, up
from 195,000 tons a year earlier, of which 180,000 tons
were
exported as fresh fruit. The remainder of the harvest was
canned
locally. The major producing area was near Abidjan.
Data as of November 1988
|
|