Côte d’Ivoire is expected to raise her official cococa farm gate price to 1,500 CFA francs ($2.47) per kilogram from 1,000 CFA francs ($2.47).
This decision follows President Allassane Ouattara initially approving a proposal for a price range between 1,100 and 1,200 CFA francs per kilogram, before later advocating for an even higher price.
Cocoa farm gate price more than tripled last year as disease and bad weather conditions pushed global markets into the red for a third consecutive year. However, this is not yet reflected in the official farmgate prices charged by producers in top producer Côte d’Ivoire for their beans.
Major companies including Hershey’s (HSY.N), Nestlé (NESN.S), Mondelez (MDLZ.O), and Barry Callebaut (BARN.S) buy cocoa from Ivory Coast.
In 2022, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana boycotted an industry conference in Brussels over price disputes.
Cocoa Production In Côte d’Ivoire
Nearly 6 million people in the West African state of Côte d’Ivoire depend on the cocoa industry.
Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire) leads the world in the production and export of the cocoa beans used in the manufacture of chocolate and as of 2012, supplies 38% of cocoa produced in the world. West Africa collectively supplies two-thirds of the world’s cocoa crop, with Ivory Coast leading production at 1.8 million tonnes as of 2017, and nearby Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Togo producing an additional 1.55 million tonnes.
Ivory Coast overtook Ghana as the world’s leading producer of cocoa beans in 1978, and today is highly dependent on the crop, which accounts for 40% of national export income. The primary non-African competitor of Ivory Coast is Indonesia, which went from having an almost nonexistent domestic cocoa industry in the 1970s to becoming one of the largest producers in the market by the early 2000s.
According to the UN FAO, Indonesia overtook Ghana and became the second-largest producer worldwide in 2006. The World Cocoa Foundation provides significantly lower figures for Indonesia but concurs that it is the largest producer of cocoa beans outside of West Africa.
Farming and Production
The crop is grown in Ivory Coast mostly by smallholder farmers planting on 1 to 3 hectares. The pods containing the beans are harvested when a sufficient number are ripe, opened to separate the seeds and pulp from the outer rind, and the seeds and pulp are usually allowed to ferment somewhere on the farm before the seeds are dried in a central location. The dried seeds are purchased by a buyer who travels among villages in an area to weigh, purchase, and collect the crop. The traitant then takes the crop to a short-holding warehouse in a major town or city where the major exporters purchase the seeds and arrange for its export from Ivory Coast.
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The entire process requires the labored contribution of a variety of workers, from the farmer who owns the fields to their laborers who may be family members (in most cases), to others in the village who harvest pods to ferment seeds at the same time, to the local buyers, and the middlemen between these purchasers and the exporters who finally get the crop to an export ship.
Certified origin
While cocoa is a pillar of the local economy, it is subject to the rules of the world market, and is facing increasing pressure to be able to certify the origin of its beans and that the cocoa is produced under ethical conditions.
The industry is making efforts in this direction, with the development of a multifunctional producer’s card, with a QR code that generates information about the farmer and their land, which includes a visa bank chip that allows them to carry out their commercial operations.
‘Want to trace the product, we want to know exactly which cocoa comes from which plantation in which region. The objective is to know who produces what, and who it passes through before being exported so that we can reassure the final consumer that our cocoa is produced under ethical conditions,’ says Jérémie Kouassi, Director of Agricultural Development at the Coffee and Cocoa Council.
With the importance of cocoa to the Ivorian economy and society at large, the stakes are high for the industry to make sure it reaches its full potential as an engine of economic development.
Written by Adeluola Biola
