ABIDJAN (Reuters) -Last week’s light rains in Ivory Coast’s cocoa-growing regions augur well for the October-to-March main crop, farmers said on Monday, adding that harvesting was intensifying before reaching its peak in December.
The world’s top cocoa producer is in its dry season which runs from mid-November to March, when downpours are scarce.
Farmers said above-average rains across the country boosted the growth of many small and average pods before the start of the seasonal dry Harmattan wind that usually sweeps in from the Sahara desert between December and March.
Farmers also said they expected more beans to leave the bush in December than in November since many pods on trees were almost ripe.
They also said buyers were happy with the current quality of beans.
In the west-central region of Daloa, where rains were unchanged compared with the five-year average, and in the central regions of Bongouanou and Yamoussoukro, where rains were above average, farmers said the weather would help cocoa trees to go through the dry season.
They said light or average rains would help the main crop to be longer and larger compared with last year.
“The rains are helping the trees, but we still need rain until mid-December because it is very hot,” said Donatien Adou, who farms near Yamoussoukro, where 17.6 mm of rain fell, 8 mm above the five-year average.
In the western region of Soubre and in the southern regions of Agboville and Divo, where rains were below average, and in the eastern region of Abengourou, where rains were above average, farmers said they hoped rains would last even longer, until late December.
“There is a lot of cocoa right now, and we think there will be a lot of harvest until next year,” said Salame Kone, who farms near Soubre, where 7.6 mm of rain fell last week, 12.3 mm below the average.
Weekly average temperatures across Ivory Coast last week ranged from 26.5 to 29.9 degrees Celsius (79.7 to 85.8 degrees Fahrenheit).
(Reporting by Loucoumane Coulibaly; Editing by Anait Miridzhanian and Alison Williams)
