P. Eyzaguirre Agriculture and Environmental Research in Small Countries: Innovative Approaches to Strategic Planning

coastline west of Caracas in the 17th century, cocoa groves then moved to the Barlovento region east of Caracas in the 18th century. Later still, in the 19th century, at a time when Ecuador had become the world's largest producer, a new pioneer front was consolidated on the north-eastern Paria peninsula. Since the mid-1930s, with the spectacular rise of cocoa production in other parts of the world, Venezuela has lost relative importance as a cocoa producer. However, its cocoa production and more importantly its production area have remained more or less the same. Does this mean that a successful balance has been achieved between forest rent diversification and the replanting of existing groves? Could it be that such a balance can only be attained when circumstances allow a country to escape from the 'dizzy spells of brown gold' before its tropical forest area has been totally exhausted? Or, to put it bluntly: Did oil save Venezuela's tropical forest? Perhaps what was true for Venezuela was not so for the neighbouring island of Trinidad, where oil production probably arrived too late. Thus, while convincing from a world-wide perspective, Ruf's demonstration does leave a number of questions pending with regard to those countries that experienced the effect of cocoa cycles but nevertheless maintained most, or at least part, of their past production. Mexico, Ecuador, several Central American countries, as well as the islands of Sao Tome, Principe and Fernando P6o off the coast of Western Africa are but a few examples. Ruf's analysis of the forerunners of present-day cocoa production in Booms et crises du cacao might have benefited from the consideration of these significant 'drop-out' cases. It remains, nonetheless, that Francois Ruf has written what will probably be regarded, for years to come, as one of the fundamental reference works on the economic and social dynamics of cocoa. His detailed empirical approach, combined with the rigour and pertinence of his analysis, should serve as a model for the study of staple commodities tropical or otherwise as a methodological guideline for economic historians, and as a warning for government officials and policy makers.