are said to provide habitat to insect pests (mirids) and are considered globally
harmful to cocoa (Ruf 1996).
Although more complete studies of the attitudes toward shade among Ivo-
rian cocoa farmers and the factors that influence them are needed, evidence
suggests that from an incipient tradition of cocoa growing in potentially sus-
tainable but low-yielding rotational agroforests, with a 35-year longevity of
the cocoa trees and a fair chance of successful replanting after a forest-fallow
period, little has survived after four decades of dominance of the sector by
migrants who had neither the tradition nor the incentives and technical assis-
tance to adopt this type of extensive agriculture. Agricultural science and
extension have also played a major part in this development by favoring low-
shade systems over much of the past three decades, in the Côte d’Ivoire as else-
where.
This history has brought the Côte d’Ivoire to the top of the list of cocoa-
exporting countries in the world but has cost it not only most of its forest but
also its former tradition of more conservative use of forest resources. As inter-
national efforts increase to compensate tropical countries and their inhabitants
for their environmental services, such as the conservation of biodiversity and
the carbon stocks of their standing forests (see Chapter 4, this volume), the
farmers of the Côte d’Ivoire may find themselves at a disadvantage to their
counterparts in other tropical regions, where cocoa-growing practices have
been more conservative. Any efforts to move the Ivorian cocoa economy
toward more sustainable practices must take into account the experiences of
other countries. This brings us back to the chocolate forests of Bahia with
which this chapter began and to those of southern Cameroon.
Cocoa Agroforest Traditions: Remnants
of the Past or Examples for the Future?
Readers of historical descriptions of regions that are now reputed for their
shaded cocoa systems, such as Grenada (Knapp 1923; Preuss 1901), Bahia in
Brazil (van Hall 1914), and the eastern region of Ghana (Knapp 1923; Revue
Générale de Botanique 1924), may be surprised to learn that in the early
twentieth century most cocoa farms in these regions were unshaded. In coun-
tries such as São Tomé, attempts to increase cocoa yields by removing shade
date back to the 1920s (Navel 1921). These cases deserve the attention of his-
torians and agronomists because the fact that farmers in East Ghana and Bahia
apparently realized benefits of shaded systems may bear lessons for the pres-
ent. However, globally speaking, these cases of increased shade adoption in the
twentieth century seem to be exceptions. Until the 1960s most cocoa was
grown under shade, and since the mid-1970s most cocoa has been grown
unshaded. Bahia, southern Cameroon, and southwest Nigeria stand out as
regions where complex and seemingly sustainable cocoa agroforests have
124 II. The Ecological Economics of Agroforestry