In Ghana, farmers try to boost ailing cocoa production

Samson Ogbole sees agribusiness as the root of sustainable development and job creation. The head trainer at Farm Lab in south-western Nigeria believes agriculture must be technology-driven and climate smart.

Samson Ogbole sees agribusiness as the root of sustainable development and job creation. The head trainer at Farm Lab in southwestern Nigeria believes agriculture must be technology-driven and climate smart.

In the 1960s, the Green Revolution had a phenomenal impact on India's food production, but it also made the land infertile, led to extensive water consumption and exacerbated groundwater loss. It also led to widespread use of chemical pesticides and fertilisers. In the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, water scarcity and poor soil quality forced many farmers to walk away from agriculture. They were perennially buried under a vicious debt cycle, with most of their earnings funnelled into buying pesticides and fertilisers.

In East Africa and Nigeria, avocado farmers want to enter the insatiable export market. Environmental concerns cast a shadow over the crop in other parts of the world. What will African farmers do differently?

Ivory Coast, the world's top cocoa producer, is facing mounting demand from Western consumers for ethical chocolate -- a product that is ecologically sound and made without child labour. In a widely publicised operation named Nawa 2, police picked up dozens of children in a crackdown in Soubre, the country's cocoa-producing heartland 400 kilometres (250 miles) west of the economic capital Abidjan.

In Kenya, a group is training women and young people in vertical farming, since prolonged dry seasons and a lack of proper storage for produce are making traditional methods more difficult.

For more than six decades, the cocoa that Richard Ambassa Mbassiga harvested from his plantation in central Cameroon faithfully paid for everything his family needed. Irregular rainfall and prolonged dry seasons have since sucked the moisture from the soil, killed cocoa trees, and cut the yield from his farm.

When Luis Diaz retired, he was unable to feed his family by relying solely on the food parcels provided by the government at subsidized prices, so he and his friends decided to grow their own. Eight years of recession and four years of hyperinflation have decimated Venezuela’s economy that has lost 80 percent of its value since 2014 leading to regular shortages of basic necessities.

Scottish salmon is sold all over the world, but the fish come from breeding farms with methods that are condemned by environmental groups. The intensive farming of salmon, in large pens where there are too many fish, leads to them dying before they reach adulthood, mainly because of a flesh-eating parasite: sea lice. There are fears that the sea lice are now spreading far beyond the farms, contaminating wild salmon in rivers. Our France 3 colleagues report, with FRANCE 24's Olivia Bizot.

In the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, in the heart of Beni territory, plagued by extreme violence from Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels, employees of the Virunga National Park are battling to keep a chocolate factory running. Their aim is to process cocoa locally to prevent it being smuggled to neighbouring Uganda and to create jobs to combat enrolment in illegal armed groups.

Farming in semi-arid regions like Muidabi, Kenya, is tough. But farmer Gabriel Mwangi Kariuki knows how to use his greenhouse to the fullest, even taking care of the irrigation himself.

Since 2018, Portugal has seen a boom in farming, made possible in large part due to cheap labour from Asia run by mafia networks. Migrant charities estimate that around 30,000 Indian, Nepali, Thai and Pakistani labourers work on broccoli fields, pick berries and tomatoes in greenhouses or pick grapes in vineyards. In return they receive poor salaries and face difficult living conditions. Our regional correspondents report.