PAPFor

Other agro-industries

Yuzhou — 2022-10-17T08:33:13Z

Other crops are grown industrially in West Africa's forest zone:

Cane sugar production in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Nigeria and Côte d'Ivoire;
Pineapple production, of which Nigeria and Ghana are among the top 20 producers worldwide;
Banana production in Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia and Ghana.
These crops are mainly grown as large-scale monocultures and constitute a major threat to Guinean natural forests.

Coffee

Yuzhou — 2022-10-17T08:31:36Z

Coffee trees are shrubs of the genus Coffea, which has many species (over 130). Two of these, Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora, originating in Africa, are cultivated for their seeds which, once roasted, are combined with almost boiling water to produce the drink coffee (from the Arabic ‘qahwah', meaning tonic): the first produces Arabica coffee, the second Robusta.

Green coffee is not a variety of coffee, it is the unroasted bean. The tree produces fruits, cherries, in the centre of which is a core made up of seeds. These are the green coffee beans.

Coffee "cherries" - containing the seeds - ripening on a coffee tree (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=134763)

Green coffee is one of the most important cash crops in the world. The Guinean forest countries are among the largest producers.

Green coffee production (tonnes)
World Rank	Country	1961	1980	2000	2018
15	Côte d'Ivoire	185 500	249 609	380 000	88 867
24	Guinea	15 000	14 400	22 080	42 900
26	Cameroon	44 700	112 207	86 200	33 164
29	Sierra Leone	5 103	10 146	15 000	28 096
32	Togo	10 300	10 385	15 200	21 023
52	Nigeria	1 100	3 500	3 830	1 849
54	Ghana	1 700	1 500	1 956	735
55	Liberia	3 400	12 742	3 127	648

Country ranking by green coffee production (in tonnes) - Source: ‘Coffee (green)', FAOSTAT, FAO, UN - https://atlasocio.com/classements/economie/agriculture/classement-etats-par-production-cafe-vert-monde.php

The ecological impact of coffee production and consumption is of great interest: new monoculture plantations, the evolution of agro-forestry systems towards a monoculture with little shade, high water consumption, the use of pesticides, soil conditioners and fertilisers are drawing increasing criticism. Even though the scale of encroachment of coffee plantations into Guinean forests is is rather small compared to cocoa, it is a real threat because it leads to net deforestation and the spreading of pesticides that enter ecological cycles of neighbouring forests and waterways.

Cocoa

Yuzhou — 2022-10-17T08:27:27Z

The term ‘cacao' (cacahualt in the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs) refers to the seeds of the cocoa tree. The cocoa tree needs a warm and humid climate, so it grows on a strip of land between 20° north and 20° south of the equator. Most varieties grow best in the shade of tall trees. The tree's fruits, cocoa pods, grow directly on the trunk or old branches of the tree and are harvested during two major harvesting seasons per year. Once harvested by hand, they are cut to extract the cocoa beans. These are fermented and dried to become the cocoa beans needed to make chocolate.

A cocoa tree in a shady plantation	A freshly harvested pod containing cocoa beans
Drying beans in a plantation supported by the PAPFor programme	The sale of cocoa beans can provide significant income for rural communities

World cocoa production has increased steadily over the past 50 years and is expected to continue to grow. Most production (over two thirds) is in West Africa.

The increase in world cocoa production masks large disparities between countries. As the table below shows, Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon are among the largest cocoa bean producers.

Cocoa production (in tonnes)
World Rank	State	1961	1980	2000	2018
1	Côte d'Ivoire	85 000	417 222	1 401 101	1 963 949
2	Ghana	415 200	277 200	436 600	947 632
4	Nigeria	197 000	153 000	338 000	332 927
5	Cameroon	75 100	117 053	122 600	307 867
11	Sierra Leone	2 840	8 497	12 000	50 150
13	Togo	11 550	16 300	6 600	41 235
17	Guinea	1 500	4 000	3 300	20 700
23	Liberia	670	3 709	3 100	8 225

Source : Cocoa (beans) , FAOSTAT, FAO, UN - https://atlasocio.com/classements/economie/agriculture/classement-etats-par-production-cacao-feves-monde.php

The total area under cocoa production is estimated to be 8 million hectares, with an average yield of 150 to 500 kg/ha/year.

In West Africa, cocoa production covers some six million hectares, which provide about 70% of total world production. Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana are the largest producers, followed by Nigeria and Cameroon. Cocoa production increased from about 2 million tonnes in 2000 to about 3 million tonnes in 2010 and about 4.5 million tonnes in 2020. About 6 million people are employed in the cocoa industry in Côte d'Ivoire.

Cocoa expansion and deforestation

Cocoa farming is a labour-intensive process. The crop's economic viability is just one of the challenges in the supply chain. Farmers often face low yields due to low productivity, declining soil fertility, pests and other environmental factors. This, coupled with a growing market for cocoa beans with little or no added value, is leading to the ‘development' of new production areas; thus, while the expansion has helped to increase production, this has been at the expense of forest. Deforestation is an increasing risk in some areas due to encroachment into forest reserves and protected areas, human migration and a lack of knowledge of good agro-forestry practices even among farmers.

Concerns about declining production due to tree ageing and disease have prompted some governments to launch large-scale rehabilitation and replanting programmes, providing farmers with improved plants, chemicals and fertilisers. As smallholder farmers do not earn enough from their cocoa to purchase external inputs, traditional mixed planting of cocoa, forest and fruit trees and some oil palm is seen by some as an alternative to a high-input approach.

Studies show that the conditions for sustainable production are not in place and that major structural changes are needed in the cocoa sector to achieve this goal. These changes relate to the economic viability of cocoa on small farms, extensive land use and the ecological impact of current cocoa farming.

There are more and more labelling initiatives for "eco-friendly" cocoa production based on cultivation in shade, thus avoiding total forest destruction.

In the PAPFor landscapes, for example, RSPB has set up a programme in the Gola landscape that ensures minimal environmental impact – including the best possible respect for the conservation status of Gola Rainforest National Park in Sierra Leone – and fair income for communities.

An example of 'green' chocolate produced in a PAPFor landscape: Gola Rainforest Chocolate © RSPB

Rubber

Yuzhou — 2022-10-17T08:15:13Z

The term ‘rubber' refers to an elastic, waterproof substance derived from the latex of certain plants or manufactured artificially.
Although natural rubber competes with synthetic rubber produced chemically from petroleum by-products, it remains irreplaceable for some of its physical properties.

Natural rubber comes mainly from latex, which is harvested by cutting the trunk of the rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis).

Rubber is used in a wide range of applications: in industry (belts, hoses, tyres, computer cable sheaths, etc.), medicine (e.g. surgical gloves), sport and children's games (playgrounds, synthetic turf materials, table tennis racket covers, etc.), shoe soles, baby bottle teats, wastewater treatment, food preservation, etc.

It provides a living for tens of millions of people around the world, the majority of whom are small-scale producers. However, the cultivation of rubber trees to produce natural rubber, through vast monoculture plantations, is also a major factor in deforestation and directly threatens the Guinean forests of West Africa. The rubber plantations are effectively biological deserts.

Rubber plantations are a real driver of deforestation

The table below shows the growth in rubber production in the Guinean forest countries, particularly in Côte d'Ivoire (Africa's largest producer) and Nigeria. Global demand is growing strongly and is expected to exceed 19 million tonnes annually by 2025, with the risk that new rubber plantations will expand at the expense of natural forests.

Natural rubber production (tonnes)
World Rank	State	1961	1980	2000	2018
7	Côte d'Ivoire	82	21 626	123 398	461 000
12	Nigeria	58 000	45 000	107 000	145 150
15	Liberia	41 205	81 400	105 000	70 548
16	Cameroon	8 900	17 365	58 027	55 425
18	Ghana	415	11 200	8 700	23 874
22	Guinea	-	-	7 000	17 165
World demand		2 120 000	3 860 000	7 580 000	15 160 000

Ranking of states by natural rubber production (in tonnes); source: ‘Rubber (natural)', FAOSTAT, FAO, UN – Adapted from https://atlasocio.com/classements/economie/agriculture/classement-etats-par-production-caoutchouc-naturel-monde.php

Following in the footsteps of the palm oil sector, the natural rubber sector is also beginning to move towards zero deforestation practices. The multi-stakeholder Global Platform on Sustainable Natural Rubber (GPSNR) was set up at the World Rubber Summit in Singapore: https://sustainablenaturalrubber.org/. Again, there are criticisms of the label for the same reasons as for palm oil, i.e. the barely independent label awarded by rubber producers.

Palm oil

Yuzhou — 2022-10-17T08:11:09Z

Palm oil is a vegetable oil extracted by hot-pressing the pulp of the oil palm fruit, a tree native to tropical Africa from which palm kernel oil is also extracted.

Originally from West Africa, the oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) is now cultivated in all tropical regions.

Palm oil supports tens of millions of people worldwide, the majority of whom are small-scale producers. A traditional ingredient in the kitchens of Africa, South America and Asia, it is now used massively in non-producing countries in the manufacture of processed foods, replacing animal fats and other vegetable oils in crisps, croutons, freeze-dried soups, spreads, biscuits, baby milk, tinned sardines, stock cubes, mayonnaise, tomato sauce, cereals, chocolate, ice cream, grated cheese, sauces, fresh creams, pastries, ready meals, ready-made sauces, rusks, buns, sweet and savoury biscuits, etc. It is also used in many cosmetic products, for example soaps, perfumes, or as a moisturising agent in creams. In other industries it is used as a lubricant or agrofuel.

Growing production ...

Indonesia and Malaysia are now the world's leading palm oil producing countries, accounting for over 85% of production between them.

However, the Guinean forest countries also rank highly among global producers, with Nigeria, Côte d'Ivoire, Cameroon and Ghana being the largest African producers.

Production (in thousand MT)
World rank	State	1965	1980	2000	2020
5	Nigeria	517	520	730	1,280
11	Côte d'Ivoire	15	147	248	515
12	Cameroon	39	93	136	465
13	Ghana	14	19	108	365
20	Sierra Leone	40	50	36	75
24	Guinea	13	40	50	50
25	Liberia	16	28	42	45

Ranking of states by palm oil production - Source: Index Mundi - Adapted from https://www.indexmundi.com/agriculture/?commodity=palm-oil&graph=production

The global need for vegetable oils is booming. They are now the fastest growing commercial commodity, and demand is expected to double by 2050 compared to 2008.

Oil palm is mainly grown commercially as a monoculture, or it can be part of an agroforestry system. When it replaces tropical forest, there are significant negative impacts for biodiversity. Analyses indicate that in West Africa, oil palm is responsible for 2-3% of forest loss between 1972 and 2015.

Monoculture oil palm plantations will play a considerable part in meeting the global demand for vegetable oils; palms produce oil more efficiently than any other crop (with an estimated global average yield of 3.5-4.0 tonnes of palm oil and a potential 11-18 tonnes of fresh fruit per hectare).

More responsible production initiatives

The Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is a non-profit association that brings together stakeholders from seven sectors of the palm oil industry: producers, food companies or distributors, consumer goods manufacturers, retailers, banks and investors, environmental and conservation NGOs, and development or social NGOs. Its aim is to develop and implement global standards for sustainable palm oil.

In particular, the RSPO label certifies that the oil's production has met a number of criteria. These include, among others, ethical and transparent behaviour, respect for communities and human rights, respect for workers' rights and conditions, protection and conservation of the environment, support for the inclusion of small-scale producers, optimisation of productivity, efficiency, positive impacts and resilience, etc. The label is however criticised by some for allowing producers to certify themselves.
For more information: https://www.rspo.org/; https://www.pronatura.ch/fr/2018/huile-de-palme-durable-de-la-poudre-aux-yeux-labellisee-rspo