ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Ivory Coast’s cotton output for the next growing season will bounce back to pre-war levels of 400,000 tonnes due to healthy rainfall and better distribution of farming inputs, the chairman of the country’s cotton and cashew council said on Wednesday.
That total would represent a 17 percent increase over the 340,090 tonnes expected during the current 2017/18 season, which runs from May to April, Mamadou Bamba told Reuters.
Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa grower, is also one of Africa’s largest cotton exporters. It produced about 400,000 tonnes of cotton per year until civil war broke out in 2002, halving output.
“There is a trend toward the resumption of production,” said Bamba. “We have had solid rainfall patterns.”
The crop is also benefiting from government efforts to organise the country into zones of production, allowing fertiliser and other inputs to be more efficiently distributed, Bamba said.
The government is aiming to hit 600,000 tonnes of production by 2020 but low international prices will force the government to subsidise payments to farmers when harvesting begins this month.