PARIS: Though cocoa prices on the financial markets have soared, the rise is benefiting cocoa growers, bean processors, speculators and chocolatiers in unequal measure.
In March, prices rocketed to more than $10,000 a tonne in New York after a poor harvest in West Africa due to a combination of bad weather conditions and disease devastating ageing plantations.
They have since fallen back from the peak, yet are still three times higher than last year.
Wide gaps between producers
In Ivory Coast and Ghana, the world’s largest cocoa producers, prices are set by the authorities in October on the basis of the previous months.
But by that point the harvests “have already been largely pre-sold”, said Tancrede Voituriez of the French agricultural research and cooperation organisation CIRAD.
This reduces the impact of cocoa price fluctuations – whether upwards and downwards.
As a result, small-scale producers, who generally earn barely enough to live on, did not immediately benefit from the surge.
That said, the authorities raised the price of the intermediate crop in April by 50 percent to between $2,300 and $2,500 per tonne – a modest rise compared to what the farmers could charge on the international exchanges.
In countries with less regulated systems, such as Cameroon, Nigeria, Ecuador and Brazil, growers managed to pocket more from the trend.
There, farmers have been allowed to sell their beans to buyers willing to approach the prices paid on the financial markets.
But that deregulated approach comes with risks of its own.
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