Coconut plague closes factories in Mozambique

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Coconut plague closes factories in Mozambique

8:18 CAT | 27 May 2016

Industrial coconut palm plantations in Inhambane province in southern Mozambique have been hit by a plague, and factories that use coconut derivatives have closed because of lack of raw materials.

Inhambane is Mozambique’s second-largest coconut producing region after Zambezia in the centre of the country, but an infestation that causes yellowing of the trees’ leaves and decreases coconut production means thousands of palm trees can be used for nothing but wood.

Yellowing leaves are cut from coconut palms

“It’s not the bottom or the trunk, but the top [leaves] that are affected by the yellowing plague,” says farmer Henrique Sengo, who says it is not easy to make a living out of coconuts.

“Here in Inhambane, in particular in Morrumbene district, where many people live on coconut sales, there is no alternative source of income because there is nowhere else to work,” Sengo complains.

Plant closures

Antonio Texeira, a farmer in Inhambane explains that, because of the disease: “Some farmers who have sawmills are cutting coconut trees down and not planting new saplings”. Currently, there are “about seven sawmills in Morrumbene village [doing this]”.

The situation has led to the closure of six plants that use copra, the dried flesh of the coconut, as raw material. “The factories that use copra to produce oil and soap have no raw material,” Teixeira says.

Apart from the lack of raw materials, leaf yellowing of palm leaves reduces copra quality.

Castro Vilankulo, an Inhambane copra supplier, admits that “the quality is not good lately, but we grade our copra to give a good product.” Manufacturers return poor quality copra to the producers, who regularly claim the yellowing is the cause of the problem, he says.

The coconut tree plague is easily transmissible. A few years ago, Inhambane provincial government distributed coconut tree saplings to farmers to repopulate the plantations, but the project failed because of irregular rainfall.

Source: Deutsche Welle