Disease may impact Ivory Coast for years

Cocoa output from the Ivory Coast will slip by 1.9% this season and could keep falling in coming years due to the spread of swollen shoot disease.

The decline this season would mark its worst harvest in at least six years, and would offset expected increases elsewhere in the West African cocoa growing zone three months. “Our cocoa production has been falling mainly due to an attack by the swollen shoot disease,” says Saint-Cyr Djikalou, Ivory Coast’s representative to the International Cocoa Organisation.