Rains were mainly below average last week in most of Ivory Coast’s cocoa-growing regions and farmers said this Monday that more moisture was needed \u200bto boost the quality of beans for the March-to-August mid-crop.<\/p>\n
Ivory Coast, \u200cthe world’s top cocoa producer, is in its rainy season, which runs officially from April to mid-November.<\/p>\n
Farmers that Reuters spoke to around the country said the weather wasn’t putting at risk \u200btrees bearing a good mix of small, average and big pods. However, more \u200brainfall was needed to boost the mid-crop.<\/p>\n
Farmers said they were so \u2060far content with conditions and added that harvesting had started to pick up. Many \u200bpods would be reaped from cocoa trees between May and July, they said.<\/p>\n
In \u200bthe west-central region of Daloa and in the central regions of Bongouanou and Yamoussoukro, where rains were below average last week. However, farmers, said the heat was helping beans that had already been \u200bharvested to dry.<\/p>\n
Farmers also said they were expecting more precipitation in coming weeks \u200bbecause the sky was often cloudy.
\n“It’s very hot. The beans are well dried, but the \u200ctrees need \u2060enough rain for the rest of the mid-crop season,” said Albert N\u2019Zue, who farms near Daloa, where 9.7 millimetres (mm) of rain fell last week, 11.9 mm below the five-year average.<\/p>\n
In the western region of Soubre and in the eastern region \u200bof Abengourou, where rains \u200bwere above average, \u2060and in the southern regions of Agboville and Divo, where rains were below average, farmers said regular and abundant rains \u200bwere needed to improve the quality and the size of \u200bbeans growing \u2060inside cocoa pods that will be harvested in coming weeks.<\/p>\n
“We need plenty of steady rain to grow large, high-quality beans,” said Kouassi Kouame, who farms near Soubre, where \u206028.6 mm \u200bof rain fell last week, 6.2 mm above \u200bthe five-year average.<\/p>\n
Weekly average temperatures across Ivory Coast last week ranged from 29 to 33.2 degrees Celsius (84 \u200bto 92 degrees Fahrenheit).<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":22668,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-32551","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Ivory Coast, \u200cthe world's top cocoa producer, is in its rainy season, which runs officially from April to mid-November.","published_date":"","news_description":"Ivory Coast, \u200cthe world's top cocoa producer, is in its rainy season, which runs officially from April to mid-November.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/32551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/32551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32552,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/32551\/revisions\/32552"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=32551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}