The news will not have escaped stock marketers or chocolate lovers. Over the past three months, cocoa prices have soared, reaching $3,429 (around 3,200 euros) per tonne in New York on July 18. Unheard of since the Ivorian political crisis of 2010-2011, when Alassane Ouattara, winner of the election, obtained a halt to cocoa exports to cut off the resources of Laurent Gbagbo, who did not want to leave power. Prices then reached 3,666 dollars (around 3,422 euros).
This year, the increase came mainly from the Ivory Coast – which contributes 45% of the world’s “brown gold” production. The cocoa harvest takes place in two stages: the main campaign, from October 1 to the end of March, during which 80% of the annual cocoa is sold, then the intermediate campaign from the beginning of April to the end of September. The price is set every October 1 and sales are made on a forward basis, that is to say before the harvest, on the promise of delivery on a given deadline.
Ivory Coast, which produced 2.4 million tonnes of cocoa in 2022, had to tighten its supply this year. Its cocoa futures sales for 2023-2024 fell by 1.3 million tonnes (-13.3%) between October 1 and July 7, when the Coffee-Cocoa Council, the national regulator , has decided to suspend them to ensure that we can fulfill all orders. Because the harvests were bad, this time not for political reasons, but for climatic reasons. The particularly intense rainy season affected cocoa plantations, causing barely formed flowers to fall and favoring the spread of fungal diseases.
Fixed prices for planters
This is not the first time that the sector has experienced a crisis linked to an inadequacy of forecasts and actual production. But, unlike what happened during the 2016-2017 overproduction season, the International Cocoa Organization forecasts a deficit between supply and demand of 116,000 tonnes this year. A gap which could turn to the advantage of producing countries if buyers rush to compete for remaining stocks. But Ivorian planters have little chance of benefiting from it.
To protect them against fluctuations in world prices, cocoa has been purchased from them at a fixed price since 2012, with an amount announced at the start of each campaign. Pricing for the 2023-2024 season will be announced on October 1st. For the 2022-2023 season, it reached 900 CFA francs per kilogram (1.37 euros). An amount that is too low, argues Edmond Konan, president in charge of standardization, certification, labeling and sustainable development at the Employers’ Confederation of SMEs of Côte d’Ivoire.
For him, the priority should be to allow small producers to achieve a decent minimum income, to convince them to stay in cocoa farming. “The biggest threat to the cocoa sector,” recalls Edmond Konan, “is diversification. Farmers behave rationally: if a crop proves more profitable than cocoa, they will leave cocoa farming. » In the same way that coffee growing has been overtaken in recent years by emerging crops such as rubber, cashew and cotton.
In cocoa growing regions, such as those of Tonkpi and Cavally in the west of the country, the majority of farmers are not interested in market fluctuations, but all say they are worried about their future. “Cocoa can go up, it can go down,” summarizes Samuel Flin Kpalé, a farmer from Gouakpale in Tonkpi, with fatalism. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow. If one day white people want something other than cocoa, what will become of us? »
Diversify crops
Two solutions exist and sometimes coexist. First, increase the yield of cocoa plantations, while reducing their surface area: produce as much, on fewer hectares, to reserve space for market gardening. “Market gardening is not falling,” continues Samuel Flin Kpalé. Every day we eat. Even when we no longer need cocoa, we will still need corn, yams or okra. »
Then, the cocoa industry encourages producers to turn to agroforestry. About a hundred kilometers from Gouakpale, in the Guémon region, the farmers of Guéhiébly grouped in a cooperative share tree species before each wet season. Half of them are shade trees, explains Landry Touré, responsible for agroforestry in the village, and half of them are fruit trees: cashew trees, kola trees, mandarin trees and orange trees…
“It’s only been three years since we started, but we’re already starting to see the results,” says the farmer. This compromise solution makes it possible to both regulate pests, such as brown rot of cocoa pods, and to better absorb heavy rain. Their frequency in Ivory Coast increases from year to year, while Ivorian cocoa, which accounts for 14% of the national GDP, feeds 24% of its population.