The Ivorian Government maintains the purchase prices of seed cotton at 310 F CFA/kg for the first choice and 285 F CFA/kg for the second for the 2026-2027 campaign, the Minister of Agriculture, Rural Development and Food Production, Bruno Nabagné Koné, recently announced. To support this decision, the State is mobilizing 29.3 billion CFA francs, including 22.5 billion for the price supplement and 6.8 billion for inputs. The prices announced are 18,100 CFA francs for a 50 kg bag of NPK, 17,050 CFA francs for urea and 35,000 CFA francs per hectare for the 7 insecticide treatments.If this measure aims to preserve producers' income, it intervenes in a sector still weakened by the drop in cultivated areas, the decline in the number of farmers (from 130,000 to 106,000) and production below objectives.

A sector still faced with weaknesses

The results of the 2025-2026 campaign illustrate the persistent difficulties of the sector. Production stood at 310,307 tonnes, against a target of 353,400 tonnes. More worrying, the number of producers increased from 106,011 in 2023-2024 to 79,979 in 2025-2026, while the cultivated areas fell from 357,147 to 290,208 hectares. Certainly, the average yield has increased, going from 873 to 1,069 kg/ha.But this improvement was not enough to compensate for the contraction of the surfaces. The Jassid crisis of 2022-2023, production costs and marketing difficulties continue to weigh on the attractiveness of the culture. To these constraints are added 30.3 billion FCFA in subsidy arrears that the government is committed to paying off.

For 2026-2027, the government aims for a production of 352,300 tonnes on 327,500 hectares, with an expected average yield of 1,076 kg/ha. Gross revenues generated by previous production stood at 94.6 billion CFA francs, compared to 95.3 billion CFA francs during the 2024-2025 campaign.