Agriculture and Environment: Cocoa

Better Management Practices: Increase the efficiency of agrochemical use

While much of the cocoa production in the world at this time is de facto organic, as the price continues to increase a number of producers will find it advantageous to purchase and use increasing quantities of agrochemicals.

During periods of low prices, many cocoa producers reduce their applications of expensive fungicides and pesticides. Not only do such practices lead to large crop losses, but also low-level reduced spraying can lead to increased resistance over time. In short, reduced, efficient use of chemicals should not imply their sporadic use, which can be quite damaging.

There are several ways to reduce the use of agrochemicals. One is to certify producers as organic and pay them to use labour instead of chemical inputs to produce their crops. There are formal organic certification procedures, but total organic production globally is still less than 10,000 hectares. However, it would be important to measure the environmental toxicity of several copper and sulphur compounds as well as tobacco extracts that are currently allowed for use by organic producers even though they are highly toxic to other organisms.

There are other ways to reduce chemical inputs as well. Managed spraying systems, using a list of approved chemicals (and excluding ones that are banned in the consuming countries), and ranking the approved chemicals according to their overall toxicity are all ways to reduce the use of the most toxic substances.

Farmers tend to adopt technology packages selectively. Often the highest returns on capital investments are most attractive (Johnson et al. 1999). However, the perceived risks of innovation are often as important as their perceived profitability.

The interactive impacts among several variables can also be used to advantage when trying to get producers to adopt better practices. Stepwise adoption of complementary better practices (e.g., the increase of organic matter and the reduction of chemical inputs) can be encouraged as a way to gradually reduce impacts and improve profitability.

There are also a number of biological controls in various stages of development that appear to reduce the need to use agrochemical inputs. For example, non-pathogenic fungi can be applied to cocoa to reduce the levels of infective spores of disease causing fungi. In Ghana, certain fungus species have been found to inhibit the growth of black pod rot in the laboratory.

In Brazil, a commercial formulation of this product has been marketed to control witches'-broom, and producers are very enthusiastic about it (Pesticide Action Network 2001). Another approach involves the introduction of a beneficial fungus into the tissues of the cocoa tree. The fungus does not harm the tree; it helps protect it by attacking pathogens and increasing resistance. CABI Bioscience is investigating several fungi to control witches'-broom in South America (Pesticide Action Network 2001).

Finally, the use of natural enemy species for biological control of insect pests is also being investigated in several countries. In Malaysia, the black ant is being used to control cocoa mirids, a common pest. To date, the main problems with biological controls have been that they kill only a very narrow range of pests, they perform poorly relative to their cost, and the product quality is inconsistent (Pesticide Action Network 2001).

For low-input, small-scale producers, improving shade management can reduce expensive inputs while balancing overall productivity. For example, shade can reduce weed growth as well as the occurrence of some fungi. Such systems also increase the long-term productivity of cocoa and can be used to restore abandoned or degraded land (Rice and Greenberg 2000).