Cocoa/Coffee Farmers Evicted from Ivorian Forests
7/23/97
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Headline: Cocoa/Coffee Farmers Evicted from Ivorian Forests
Source: (c) Reuters Limited 1997
Date: 7/23/97
Author: Matthew Bunce
GAGNOA, Ivory Coast - Ivory Coast has evicted some cocoa and coffee
farmers from its dwindling tropical forest and has told those who remain
that it will start burning them out from August if they stay.
But crop harvesting is likely to continue in protected areas for several
years, evicted farmers and government officials say.
"We will pass into the forceful removal stage in August but some have left
already," one official for the state Societe de Developpement des Forets
(SODEFOR) forestry agency told Reuters. "We told farmers they must leave
or we will burn them out."
The government threw its weight behind a European Union-backed 1996-2005
reforestastion plan with a March 7 statement on evictions.
The statement said 30 percent of protected forests was "illegally
occupied" by up to 450,000 farmers and their relatives, growing up to
100,000 tonnes of cocoa -- roughly a tenth of the 1996/97 crop.
Ivory Coast produces about 40 percent of the world's cocoa.
"They have been given three years to carry on harvesting but after that
production could change," one buyer told Reuters. Farmers would not be
able to maintain farms from a distance.
Local farmers not living at forest farms would continue to harvest as
normal but they are in a minority, SODEEFOR says.
Forest cover in Ivory Coast, the world's largest producer of cocoa, has
fallen with rising cocoa output to around 3.9 million hectares (9.6
million acres) from 12 million hectares before independence from France in
1960.
Crop experts say forest cover means good weather for cocoa.
Migrant farmers fleeing southern coastal forests visited by Reuters in
July had set up makeshift villages nearby after SODEFOR agents gave them
two months notice to quit farms in May.
One said his trees had not been destroyed although farmers had left forest
camps. He said 30 had arrived in one day at Dagbego 2, near the southern
Dassioko forest at Fresco where some farmers have been told to assemble
until further notice.
"They said we could go back and harvest what was on trees," but not plant
any more stock, said Sirike, a 24-year old building a temporary shack and
planning to move from the area.
SODEFOR agents said the policy was still sketchy.
"Our patrols show a lot have left but there are no figures," SODEFOR south
coastal sector chief N'Da Assou Mou told Reuters at his base in the
Dassioko forest. He said this was representative.
Many farmers had arrived after forests were protected by law in 1973 and
therefore had no common law rights to land.
"SODEFOR will take certain steps to solve that (ownership) problem but
most have no rights over the forest," a SODEFOR agent said.
N'Da said about 392 planters had set up in the 12,437-hectare Dassioko
forest. In all five Fresco sectors, a total of 2,000 farmers had been
registered in 1993.
Cocoa production had taken over 2,500 hectares, with yields of 0.3 tonnes
per hectare. Coffee farms covered 206 hectares, producing one tonne per
hectare.
So far, only 50 hectares of forest in the area had been replanted but
seedlings of fast-growing species were being grown for a replanting
programme. "In the long term we will replant all of it," N'Da said.