plantations in some regions of the country, such as the former cocoa regions
of Tanda and M’Bahiakro, which had almost turned into savanna. Data from
the Baoulé village of Konankouassikro, also in the Gagnoa area, show that
rates of successful replanting in the 1990s remained extremely low compared
with planting rates after forest in the 1970s (Figure 6.3).
Technological Innovations in the Postforest Era
The described system of cocoa growing was highly consumptive of forest. As
old cocoa plantations needed to be replanted and more migrants arrived, tech-
nological innovations developed in response to the postforest conditions. The
following three examples are particularly instructive in the present context
because, theoretically, they offered opportunities to adopt more sustainable
practices, including agroforestry, and perhaps avoid some of the difficulties
described earlier. However, because extension services lacked the training and
financial means to engage in the necessary dialog with the farmers and pro-
mote more sustainable practices, the opportunities were missed and farmers
had to rely mostly on their own innovation and channels of information.
In the 1980s, primary forests for cocoa planting became increasingly scarce
in the east and center-west regions of the Côte d’Ivoire. Both established and
recently arrived migrant farmers therefore looked for alternative sites where
cocoa could be planted conveniently. In the 1960s most farmers in the forest
zone of the Côte d’Ivoire were still oriented toward robusta coffee, and a several-
volume report from that time treated the difficulties of rehabilitating and
- Chocolate Forests and Monocultures 119
Figure 6.3. Planting and replanting of cocoa by Baoulé migrants in Konankouas-
sikro, center-west of the Côte d’Ivoire (F. Ruf, unpublished survey results, 2001).