Ivory Coast has a serious deforestation problem: Some scientists say it is losing its woodlands faster than any other nation in Africa. Four-fifths of the forest cover that the country had when it became independent in 1960 was gone by 2010, according to the European Union.
When it comes to cocoa, the government faces a conundrum. It wants more farmers to grow more cocoa, but on less land.
The country already produces about 40 percent of the world’s supply, and it counts on the beans for a big chunk of its export earnings. President Alassane Ouattara wants to raise its share to half of the global market by 2020.
Ivory Coast also looks to agriculture as a main tool to combat poverty and hunger in the countryside. Most of its cocoa is grown on small family farms of a few acres, much like the plots the squatters carved out in Mont Péko.
But Mr. Ouattara has also set another goal: to restore 20 percent of the country’s territory to forest, up from less than 12 percent now.
The only way to reconcile these ambitions is to find ways to get much higher yields from the land that will still be cultivated, using modern farming techniques that are often beyond the knowledge of the squatters.
The chocolate industry is trying to help. The World Cocoa Foundation, a trade group that counts giant manufacturers like Mars and Nestlé as members, has spent millions of dollars trying to double cocoa productivity in Ivory Coast, “and therefore take the pressure off the kind of expansion into protected forest areas that we’ve seen,” said Richard Scobey, the foundation’s president.
