Indonesia fights cocoa disease as crop starts

KALUPPANG VILLAGE, Indonesia, Sept 18 - Indonesian cocoa farmers are racing to fight a deadly fungal disease, cutting leaves and branches affected by Vascular-streak Dieback, as the mid crop kicks off in the main growing island of Sulawesi.

VSD has struck 60 percent of plantations in Sulawesi, and is another blow to the cocoa industry in Indonesia, which has also been fighting the worm-like cocoa pod borer pest since the 1980s. Indonesia is the world's third-largest cocoa producer after Ivory Coast and Ghana.

The mid crop starts in September and lasts until December. The main harvests began in April but lasted less then four months because of the disease.

Indonesia cocoa output is expected to fall to 480,000 tonnes in 2008 from 520,000 tonnes in 2007 after the fungal disease killed hundreds of cocoa trees in plantations across Sulawesi, according to the Indonesian Cocoa Association (Askindo).

"Many people have cut down their cocoa trees and replaced them with corn," said Candring, a 58-year old farmer in this tiny village a five-hour drive north of Makassar, the provincial capital of South Sulawesi.

"We don't know if VSD can be cured. What we are doing now is cutting affected leaves. It looks like the mid crop won't produce much," said Candring, who inherited a 30 acre (12 hectare) plantation from his parents in the early 1970s.

While cocoa pod borer directly hits the pods, VSD initially attacks leaves before spreading to branches and trunks, which will eventually kills the trees. About 100 families live in Kaluppang village in Pinrang regency, one of the hardest-hit regions in South Sulawesi.

"At the moment, we encourage farmers to just cut the branches affected by VSD as that's the only way to prevent the spread of the disease," said Fajar 29, who is employed by Askindo to train farmers how to manage their cocoa trees and soil.

Another cocoa farmer, Paranrangi, said farmers needed to work together to fight the disease, otherwise more farmers would just cut down the trees and grow corn.

"It is not easy to manage the trees by yourself. You need to work as a group," he said.

The Indonesian government has earmarked around $340 million for replanting and rehabilitation of cocoa trees in Sulawesi within the next three years but it has yet to come up with details on how it will be implemented.

Worries about the size of the crop in Ivory Coast and Indonesia have propelled cocoa prices to their highest level in more than 20 years in 2008.

"What about the main crop next year? That will depend on what will happen with the rainfalls in January, February and March," said Noel Janetski, president of Sulawesi's first cocoa grinder PT Mars Symbioscience Indonesia.

EXCESSIVE RAINS

Excessive rains across plantations in Sulawesi in recent months helped the spread of the VSD.

In Makassar, dealers said daily arrivals from plantations stood between 50 and 100 tonnes in the past week. Exports from Makassar dropped 9.5 percent to 103,344 tonnes in January to August this year compared with the same period last year. Exports stood at 181,122 tonnes in 2007, down from 220,185 tonnes.

The provinces of South, Central and Southeast Sulawesi account for 75 percent of Indonesia's cocoa production. Cocoa is also grown in Sumatra.

Indonesia sells cocoa beans to grinders in Asia, Europe and United States.