Since the beginning of the 2022-2023 agricultural season, severe and persistent attacks of jassids, pests of the cotton crop, have been reported by producing countries in Africa.
The 15th review meeting of the Regional Program for Integrated Cotton Production in Africa (PR-PICA) opened this Wednesday, April 12, 2023 in Grand-Bassam, a seaside town 40 km east of Abidjan, to discuss the
decline in cotton production on the continent.
The Minister of State, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development of Cote d’Ivoire, Adjoumani Kouassi, welcomed the actions of the sub-regional organization, the PR-PICA, which has helped strengthen
scientific collaboration between States and meet several challenges.
He said that despite the efforts of the State of Cote d’Ivoire and the actors of the Ivorian cotton sector, the national production of seed cotton, estimated at 236,175 tons at the end of March, has dropped by
more than 50% compared to the previous campaign which was estimated at 539,623 tons.
This, he said, represents a loss of 334,250 tons compared to the revised forecast of July 2022. But cotton research has not remained silent in the face of this crisis, which has spread to cotton farms in all PR-PICA member countries.
“Very quickly, the National Agricultural Research Center of Cote d’Ivoire, the CNRA, identified the perpetrator of these attacks, namely jassids, and developed an arsenal of effective responses to these pests,” noted the Minister of State.
For the 2022-2023 season, the Ivorian government has granted a subsidy of CFA39 billion on the price of inputs to producers, and a subsidy of CFA29 billion to producers to cover part of their agricultural credit.
The last action of PR-PICA was to “collaborate to identify the cause of the drop in cotton production in all our countries for the 2022-2023 season,” he noted, indicating that “since the beginning of the 2022-2023 agricultural season, severe and persistent attacks of jassidia have been reported by producers and cotton companies.”
“Dear researchers and actors of the cotton sector of PR-PICA member countries, you should know that there are still many challenges to be met, caused by the security situation in Ukraine, the surge in input prices and the jassid attack,” he said.
“I sincerely hope that these three days of work will be the framework for cordial, frank and productive exchanges, around themes that will contribute to the recovery of cotton production following the jassid crisis,” he continued.
The regional program for integrated cotton production in Africa is a sub-regional organization that brings together cotton companies, inter-professions, cotton research structures and cotton producers’ organizations from eight cotton producing countries in West and Central Africa.
The member states (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Mali, Senegal and Togo) share the same problems of pests, soil fertility and adaptation of cultivated varieties to climate change.
AP/fss/APA