Ivory Coast Rains Have Cocoa Farmers on Edge for New Season
- Trucks can’t get to villages to collect cocoa beans: farmers
- Wet weather means beans aren’t drying properly and spoiling
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A month into the new cocoa season, farmers in top grower Ivory Coast are getting anxious, as heavy rains continue to flood roads and plantations and spark concerns about rotting crops.
Many roads are unusable around Sassandra in the southwest, one of the major growing regions, and buyers’ trucks can’t get to the villages to collect cocoa beans, said Joseph Ouedraogo, who farms in the area. Unusually wet and cloudy weather also means that beans aren’t drying properly and are getting spoiled, he said.