per hectare (compared with about 1,500 cocoa trees per hectare). For both
indigenous farmers and migrants in the survey, the revenues obtained from
these fruit trees were only 5–10 percent of those obtained from cocoa. The
slightly higher noncocoa revenues of the migrants could be explained by bet-
ter access to the cola trade networks in their home countries, Burkina Faso and
Mali, and more commercially oriented selection of noncocoa trees.
In ecological terms these fruit trees are no substitutes for the giant forest
remnant trees that constituted the overstory of the traditional cocoa agro-
forests. However, today most Ivorian cocoa farmers, and especially the young
generation, seem to have a negative perception of permanent shade from
forest trees. In a 2002 survey of 65 farms focusing on the center-east and cen-
ter-west regions, 70 percent of the respondents found shade from forest trees
useless to cocoa, and 20 percent found it useful only as temporary shade for
plantation establishment, for which (at least on suitable soils) most farmers
preferred plantains. About 90 percent believed that shade trees increased not
only diseases but also pest problems of the cocoa, because they allowed insects
to hide in the canopies and escape insecticides, and reduce their cocoa rev-
enues (F. Ruf, unpublished data). Although the farmers acknowledge that
shade prolongs the life of their cocoa farms, this is not sufficient to prevent
zero-shade plantations from spreading.
This trend tends to be reinforced by a generational change of the farm
owners: when a recently arrived migrant buys an old shaded cocoa farm from
an indigenous farmer, the first decision often is to eliminate the shade trees.
In the indigenous population, an intergeneration transfer often provokes the
same behavior. Many young cocoa farmers want immediate revenues, irrespec-
tive of the long-term impact on the cocoa farm. Because chainsaw teams are
readily available, it is easy to turn the shade trees into cash. This type of behav-
ior is even more likely if a cocoa farm is inherited by several family members
together and final ownership is uncertain. Even in the most remote migrant
villages close to the border of the largest forest reserve in the country, the Taï
National Park, it has become very common to cut down the giant trees that- Chocolate Forests and Monocultures 123
Table 6.3. Density of noncocoa trees and annual revenues in 15 cocoa farm plots
in the eastern, center-west, and western regions of the Côte d’Ivoire in 2002.
Estimated Estimated
Number of Number of Number of Noncocoa Cocoa
Noncocoa Trees Fruit Trees Forest Trees Revenues Gross Revenues
per Hectare per Hectare per Hectare per Farma per FarmaIndigenous farmers 37 23 3.7 70,000 1,065,000
Migrants 21 15 1.8 125,000 1,400,000
Source:CIRAD-TERA survey (Delerue 2003).
aIn African Financial Community francs.