“…For, after all, I had been into cocoa a bit myself. That was back when The Great Winfield had discovered cocoa trading. Occasionally in those more leisured days I would sit with him lazily watching stocks move, like two sheriffs in a rowboat watching catfish in the Tennessee River….”
Via some folks who keep an eye on the cocoa trade.
From SwissInfo,ch, January 6:
The world’s two biggest cocoa producers have had enough. Pressured into offering discounts to international buyers to shore up sales during the Covid-19 pandemic, Ghana and Ivory Coast decided to take a joint stand.
On July 29, the Côte d’Ivoire-Ghana Cocoa Initiative (CIGCI), an Accra-based joint price lobbying organisation announced that from August Ghana and Ivory Coast would stop giving concessions on a longstanding premium known as the origin differential (OD), the price paid above the international market price for high quality cocoa beans. The ODs were cut by 150% in the previous two years in a desperate effort by the cocoa boards of the two countries to shift stocks of beans. What was once a price premium that raised the incomes of millions of cocoa farmers was transformed into a discount that drained their fiscal budgets.
“You [international cocoa buyers] still get the same quality, but you as a market decide to discount it because you feel the price is too high for the market,” Alex Assanvo, CEO of the CIGCI told SWI swissinfo.ch.
The CIGCI set a November 20 deadline for chocolate and cocoa companies to stop asking for OD discounts and threatened to suspend their sustainability programmes and ban their access to cocoa plantations to estimate harvests unless they complied.
Two days before the deadline, an agreement was reached to create a working group of cocoa producers and buyers to find a long-term sustainable price mechanism that will ensure farmers are paid fairly for quality cocoa beans. The working group will have to come up with a proposal by the end of the first quarter of 2023.
“The November 18 meeting with the buyers presented a strong showing of willingness to work together by all parties,” says Assanvo. “It also affirmed that the member countries have been heard, which will further lead to more transparent engagement with partners.” ....
....MUCH MORE
