Source: AFP
“Thirty years I’ve been in cocoa — and this is the worst time,” said Siaka Sylla as he contemplated a nearly empty warehouse at his cooperative in Ivory Coast, the world’s top producer of the bean.
After exceptionally heavy rainfall, this year’s total cocoa harvest, used to make chocolate, is expected to be very low. The crop is harvested twice a year — October to March for the main crop and May to August for the mid crop.
On a warm November morning, a group of trucks arrived from the plantations to drop off a few dozen bags of beans at the Scappen cooperative in the village of Hermankono, near the central southern town of Divo, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) from the financial capital Abidjan.
“It has rained too much this year. Usually at this time, trucks are queuing up to unload. Here, we only have 200 bags, when we could store 10 times more,” complained Sylla, president of the cooperative of about 1,500 planters.
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He expects the harvest volume to be down about three to four times compared to last year.
Source: AFP
A glance at the surrounding fields shows that the fear is well founded. And
Analysts also confirm this.
“Traders are concerned about another short production year and those sentiments have been reinforced by El Nino which could threaten West African crops with hot and dry weather later this year,” said Jack Scoville of Price Futures Group.
The analyst warned of “tight supplies” amid “further reports of reduced arrivals in Ivory Coast and Ghana”, the world’s number two producer.
On a dirt track that only motorcycles could pass, Bamoussa Coulibaly picked some rare yellow-red pods from the many cacao trees.
July was a particularly rainy month in the south of Ivory Coast, just as the cocoa plants were blooming. As a result, “the flowers fell,” said the farm worker as he explained his meager harvest.
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Of those cocoa pods that did resist, some rotted anyway in the excess moisture.
Rainfall is skyrocketing
Some areas saw rainfall this year between 20 and 40 percent above the 1991-2020 norm, according to data from the national weather service Sodexam.
Source: AFP
To flourish fully, cacao needs a fine alternation between sunshine and rain.
A few kilometers from Hermankono, in the bush near N’Douci, Monique Koffi Amenan walked through a marshy field created by weeks of rain that caused the neighboring river to burst its banks.
“This year, what we picked won’t even fill one bag, instead of the usual two. The rain rotted the cocoa,” explained the planter in her 40s who spent a decade working the area with her husband.
“We predicted a 20 percent drop compared to last year and our predictions have been confirmed. With the heavy rains, many pods have rotted,” Yves Brahima Kone, head of the Ivorian Coffee-Cacoa Council (CCC) regulator, told AFP.
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Prices are also going up
With a 40 percent share of global supply, Ivory Coast is the world’s top producer ahead of neighboring Ghana, whose production has recently suffered from cocoa stem virus disease, as well as illegal mining on some cocoa farms .
Anticipating a poor harvest, Ivory Coast suspended export contracts — about two-thirds of production normally goes to the EU bloc — in July.
As a result of this move, cocoa prices have soared in commodity markets above $4,000 a tonne in New York, a level not seen in more than four decades since 1978.
It was a similar story in London, with a tonne reaching £3,478 on November 10, a record since 1989 and up 70 per cent on January.
The situation threatens to remain critical with the resurgence of the El Niño climate phenomenon threatening West Africa.
Source: AFP
“This is proof that climate change is hitting developing countries the hardest,” said Ivory Coast economist Serafin Prao.
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Even before next year’s expected further El Niño misery, producers are already worried about their near-term financial health.
In Ivory Coast, the government sets cocoa prices. At 1,000 CFA francs per kilo (€1.50, $1.70) it is higher this year than in recent seasons, but low quantities will affect the incomes of many producer families.
Cocoa provides a wage for about one in five Ivorians — about six million people — according to the World Bank.
“My kids are school age — but if cocoa doesn’t deliver, how are we going to get by?” Amenan was worried.
“In a liberalized system, farmers would be winners in the current context, as cocoa (prices) reach record levels. In Cameroon, for example, where the price is not set by the state, a kilo of cocoa sells for twice as much,” he said the economist Prao.
Back at the Hermankono cooperative, Siaka Sylla is pinning his hopes on a better interim harvest next April.
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“But that won’t make up for our losses,” he said.
Source: AFP