NIGERIA-COMMODITIES: Cocoa’s Dwindling Fortunes

By Toye Olori Reprint | | Print |

Toye Olori

AKURE, Nigeria, Mar 11 1997 (IPS) - Women and children stand beside makeshift kiosks along the 50-km expressway between the south- western towns of Akure and Owo, selling snails and game, commonly called “bushmeat” in Nigeria.

Sometimes they rush after slow-moving cars, offering rodents, hares, monkeys, antelopes or alligators even before the drivers have time to stop. Prices range from 500 naira (about six dollars) to 4,000 naira (50 dollars) depending on the type and size of the animal.

‘Bushmeat’, whether cooked in the traditional ‘Peppersoup’ or prepared in a stew, is a delicacy in middle-class restaurants in Nigeria’s cities. Only the well-to-do can afford it.

The animals are either shot or trapped when people set fire to forests during hunting expeditions.

“We buy the bushmeat from the hunters and sell to motorists along the express. Sometime we have customers from big hotels who prepare bushmeat for their customers,” a trader who gave her name as Aishatu told IPS.

But what has become a money-spinner for Aishatu and other traders, and for the hunters they buy from, has spelt misfortune for cocoa farmers in south-western Nigeria as thousands of cocoa trees are destroyed yearly through bush burning.

“At least five percent of cocoa farms is lost to bush burning every year in Ondo state alone,” said Akinwale Ojo, Executive Secretary of the Akure-based Cocoa Association of Nigeria (CAN). He told IPS that the action of hunters had forced some cocoa farmers to shift to palm oil production since the palms need less care and are less vulnerable to fire than cocoa trees.

Bush burning in Ondo, where Akure is located, and neighbouring states has greatly affected the production of cocoa and other crops. As a result, the Ondo state government recently embarked on a campaign to make people aware of the danger bush burning poses to food security.

“That yam you eat is from the land, that wood for shelter is from the land, the clothes you wear come from the land … Stop bush burning. Prevent poverty, hunger and starvation,” runs a jingle often aired on television here as part of the campaign.

But it’s not only bushfires that have caused the decline in cocoa’s fortunes in Nigeria, analysts say.

They list ageing trees and farmers, inefficient plantation management, high production costs arising from a substantial weakening of the naira, price instability fuelled by hoarding and speculation and inconsistent export policies as some of the contributory factors.

“Cocoa trees are old, able-bodied farmers have deserted the farms while the elderly farmers now use ‘shareholders’ (tenant farmers) whose only business is to harvest pods, treat the seeds and sell while the proceeds are shared between them and farm owners,” says Supo Olagunju, a produce consultant and founding president of CAN.

There is no effort to tend to the trees or plant new ones, says Olagunju, who adds that plantations are also giving way to fast growing towns and villages.

Projections by the International Cocoa Organisation (ICO) show that Nigeria’s cocoa output will drop by about five percent, from 147,000 metric tonnes in the 1995-1996 season to 140,000 metric tonnes in 1996-1997. (Cocoa seasons run from October of one year to September of the next.)

Nowadays, no product comes anywhere near petroleum as a contributor to Nigeria’s economy since oil and oil products account for about 90 percent of the country’s export earnings, but cocoa was once king.

It used to provide about 40 percent of Nigeria’s foreign exchange earnings in the 1960s and the early 70s. Then it lost out to oil.

The decline has accelerated since the mid-1980s. Before a structural adjustment programme started in 1986, cocoa made up six percent of Nigeria’s exports. Now its share is below one percent.

Cocoa exporters and analysts say the decline was caused, to a large extent, by the export of sub-standard produce, which led to the rejection or undepricing of Nigerian cocoa on the international market. The resultant reduction in the difference between farm-gate and export prices has served as a disincentive.

By the first quarter of last year, for example, the margin between the farm-gate and export prices had narrowed to just under 16 dollars per tonne — the domestic price was about 1,212 dollars, while the international market paid an average of around 1,228 dollars per tonne.

Foreign end-users have tended to like Nigerian cocoa because of its good flavour and aroma, so demand has been high, but this has allegedly led some traders to export low-grade cocoa beans.

However, Olagunju believes foreign buyers have used this as a pretext for unfairly underpricing Nigeria’s cocoa.

“The situation of adulteration or sub-grade cocoa has been exaggerated,” he argues. “Some manipulators have merely used the excuse to unfairly (get) discounts on Nigerian cocoa, a situation that has led to a loss of not less than 136 million pounds in the last nine years,” he said.