Success Story: Planting the Way to a Successful Cocoa Farm
Dimoulé, Côte d’Ivoire
Henriette Gnépaguiré is a cocoa farmer from the village of Dimoulé located 6 km from San Pedro in South Western Côte d’Ivoire. She is 42 years old and the mother of four children.
About seven years ago, Mrs. Gnépaguiré decided to cultivate the 1.5 hectare plot of land that she inherited from her parents. She chose to plant cocoa using the traditional farming practices common in her area. To start her farm, she acquired seeds from her neighbors’ farms and planted them directly in the ground. Her efforts were met with limited success – few pods and low survival rates for newly planted trees. “Year after year, I have planted cocoa on this same farm,” she recalls. “During the dry season, all the plants die and I have to restart all over again all the time.”
Then, in 2010, she registered for a Sustainable Tree Crops Program Farmer Field School training course taking place in her village. Through the training sessions, she learned new farming techniques that would improve her farm’s productivity. Mrs. Gnépaguiré learned about the benefits of using improved planting material from a breeding program, and how to raise seedlings in a nursery before planting them on the farm.
She applied this new knowledge to half a hectare of her farm using improved seeds she received through the program and raised in her nursery. At first, she had some reservations about using these new seeds, but those thoughts quickly subsided. Although the trees will need several years to mature before they reach peak production, she is already noticing a difference. “When I planted the cocoa, I always had some doubts,” she says. “But look at these young trees; they look like mature cocoa trees. This time, this is the best. It is just magnificent.”
WCF thanks IITA/STCP Côte d’Ivoire for contributing this story.
Read about the Sustainable Tree Crops Program