According to Reuters, rain in Côte d’Ivoire was at or below five-year averages in most of the country’s cocoa-growing regions last week, but the recent rainfall should still help the soil’s moisture content to be enough to get a good harvest.
Starting in November, the country enters a dry season, which will last until the crop is ready around March next year.
In ideal circumstances, a little more rainfall over the next couple of months should secure farmers’ hopes of a bumper crop. Nevertheless the earlier heavy rains we reported last week will have helped as long as the soil can retain the moisture.
Farmers in one of the main growing regions of Soubre have seen average rainfalls and believe they are in for a good year.
One outstanding risk is the Harmattan season, during which dry dust is blown in from the Sahara desert after December and can last several months.
Currently, the temperatures averaged between 27.3 and 30.3 Celsius across the country.
