Mozambique's coconut graveyards #mozambique

Orlando Albinho spent much of his 40 years collecting
coconuts from the tops of leafy palm trees and selling them
in the local market or to nearby factories that made soap
and oil from the dried white flesh.
Three years ago, everything changed.
What used to be miles upon miles of coconut groves in and
around Quelimane, the provincial capital of Zambezia in
central Mozambique, are now forests of matchsticks, their
slender trunks barren and stripped of their leaves.
"Now all [the coconut trees] have died ... and [with them] all
of the jobs," Albinho says, gesturing towards what remains
of his livelihood-a modest pile of some two dozen small
coconuts stacked up by the sandy roadside. "Now it's all
bad."
He sells each one for no more than eight meticais-the
equivalent of 25 cents. The smallest and least developed
coconuts go for even less-about 17 cents.
A native of Madjimanos, a small, coastal community in
Zambezia, Albinho is among tens of thousands of people in
Mozambique who relied on coconut trees-or coqueros as
they are locally called-for their livelihood and food security.
That is until an insect-borne infection known as Coconut
Lethal Yellowing Disease spread across the country,
reducing entire coconut groves to bleak graveyards of a
once thriving industry.
Mozambique was once one of the largest coconut producers
in the world. According to a report from the Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO), in 2011, Mozambique
produced approximately 62,000 tons of copra, dried coconut
meat, which was used for export, oil production, and local
consumption.
Today, reports estimate that as much as half of the
country's coconut trees have been destroyed, making it
impossible to sustain the same level of production. Many of
the coconuts that are harvested today are also dramatically
smaller.
The disease, which has been found across the world from
Jamaica to the Philippines and even southern Florida, is
caused by a virus-like bacterium that is spread by insects.
In Mozambique, the problem was exacerbated by rhinoceros
beetles, which laid their larvae in fallen trees and attacked
newly planted saplings.
"When the disease begins, the leaves become yellow and
then the coconuts fall to the ground," says Alberto Simão,
45, who like Albinho, relied on coconuts to provide for
himself and his family. Then the top falls off and it just
leaves the trunk. We lost a lot of coconut trees."