Growers in the Ivory Coast set to receive new coffee trees from Nestle

Coffee farmers in the Ivory Coast will soon be receiving a batch of disease-resistant plants as part of an initiative to increase Robusta production in the country.

Led by Nestle, the world’s biggest maker and marketer of coffee in the world, it is hoped that levels of robusta will rise in West Africa by around 40% in a six year period.

Currently, Ivory Coast grows, on average, in the region of 100,000 tons of Robusta a year with the majority of it ending up being used to make instant coffee. Nestle’s plan would hopefully boost output to seasonal mean of 140,000 tons, so says Patricio Astofli, Nestle’s the general director of Nestle’s Ivorian unit.

The disease resistant plants in question will, accordingly to preliminary estimates, yield at least 1 ton of beans per 2.5 acre which is a substantial increase on current levels which, in some areas, are as low as 0.3 tons per acre.

Astofli believes that the age of the trees and a lack of renovation are to blame: “The production of coffee has been neglected, so most of the plants are quite old,” he said in an interview earlier on this month.

It is believed that over two million plants will be distributed to farmers this year.

But there are other reasons. Production levels in the country have not reached pre-millennium figures because of armed conflicts ravaging traditional coffee growing regions and the markets inherent volatility and prolonged periods of low wholesale prices.

According to internal figures coffee production peaked in the late 1990s when a yield of well over 300,000 tons was reported in 1998. Current projections have predicted that around 125,000 tons will be grown for the 2014-15 season.