Food prices change life for Ivorian cocoa farmers

By Ange Aboa

GOGOKRO, Ivory Coast (Reuters) - ...

Cocoa prices are good this season, with U.S. futures up by 50 percent in the past year. But they have failed to keep pace with surging world prices for basic foods like rice ...

"When there was no more support, everybody just grew it for themselves. But now rice has got so expensive, we will again start producing not just for ourselves but for sale, to get a little money," elderly farmer Augustin Kouakou told Reuters ...

"We can't say we won't buy rice any more, but my wife and I can eat foutou, yam or plantain banana instead of rice, and save a little on buying rice," <Antoine Beli, a cocoa farmer> said ...

Ivory Coast has large commercial plantations growing bananas and pineapples for export ...

http://uk.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUKL0720164720080507

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And yet when I suggested that exact thing here, you'd have thought I was asking people to eat dirt cookies.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Cassava is the third-most important food source in tropical countries, but it has one major problem: The roots and leaves of poorly processed cassava plants contain a substance that, when eaten, can trigger the production of cyanide. That’s a serious problem for the 500 million people who rely on cassava as their main source of calories, among them subsistence farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa ... http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/cassava.htm