Investing in agrochemicals in the cocoa sector of Côte d’Ivoire: Hypotheses, evidence and policy implications

This paper presents empirical evidence to show how socioeconomic factors affect theadoption of and investment in agrochemicals in the cocoa sector of Côte d’Ivoire. Theanalysis uses primary farm-level data collected in 2002 from a nationally representativesample of more than one thousand cocoa farmers. The study describes the status of theadoption of various chemical inputs and uses a multiplicative heteroscedastic Tobit modelto identify and quantify the impact of the socioeconomic environment on the incentive toinvest. The results generally show that farmer, household and village characteristics are allimportant in explaining the farmers’ decisions. The paper concludes by outlining a numberof implications for strategic targeting of farmers and locations. These should serve as entrypoints for a successful diffusion of efficient pest, disease and soil management programs.