For the first year, the total effort for clearing, planting, and weed control was
168 working days per hectare for replanting and 86 days per hectare for plant-
ing after forest (Ruf and Siswoputranto 1995). Another estimate of all labor
investments until the cocoa started to produce put the replanting effort at 260
days per hectare, compared with 74 days per hectare for planting after forest
(Oswald 1997).
In the hills of Sulawesi, cocoa planting after fallow instead of forest results
in higher labor costs, and most smallholders also believe that cocoa needs
more fertilizer when planted on grassland than when planted on forestland,
with the total difference in production costs (consisting of net inputs such as
fertilizers and labor costs) amounting to approximately US$0.10 per kilogram
of cocoa (Table 6.1). This should be considered a conservative estimate
because the net input costs are reduced by yields of food crops that are initially
associated with the cocoa, which tend to be higher after forest than after grass-
land. In addition, the depreciation of the labor costs during the juvenile phase
of the cocoa trees puts planting after grassland at a further disadvantage
because it may delay the first cocoa yields. As a consequence, forest is still
sought in the hills and uplands, but farmers in the rich alluvial plains fear the
loss of the forest rent less (Ruf 2001).
For centuries, this forest rent and the availability of forestland has discour-
aged sustainable cocoa growing. For example, MacLeod (1973) described the
wasteful use of forest land in Sonocusco, Mexico, in the sixteenth century:
The heavy cutting and burning of forests and tall grasses caused
erosion, leaching of the top soil, and flash flooding. Land was
plentiful compared to labor and capital on the cocoa coast, and
the Spaniards saw no reason for maintaining its quality and fer-
tility. The restoration of eroded, leached soils for cacao planta-
tions is an extraordinarily long and difficult task even today. The
Central Americans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
did not have the technology and the patience to attempt it. Cat-
tle or brush often filled the poor pasture lands left behind by the
exhausted cacao growers (p. 95).112 II. The Ecological Economics of Agroforestry
Table 6.1. Estimate of cocoa production costs in the hills
of Sulawesi.
After Forest After Grassland Forest Rent
(cents kg-1) (cents kg-1) (cents kg-1)
Net input costs 8 16 7
Labor costs 28 31 3
Total 36 46 10
Source:F. Ruf, unpublished data from a survey in 1997.