Ivory Coast's upcoming cocoa crop may exceed last season in size, but not quality, as a lack of investment continues to dog the No. 1 world supplier - setting the stage for softer prices next year, according to Reuters. Quality issues during the current mid-crop harvest have already started hitting local prices in Ivory Coast. A kilogram of cocoa at the port of Abidjan fetched between 640 CFA ($1.39) and 670 CFA, from between 670 CFA and 700 CFA the previous week, due to improperly dried beans, a purchases manager of a European cocoa exporter said. "Ivory Coast is the Middle East of cocoa," said Ralph Preston, analyst at Heritage West Futures in San Diego. "When the beans are of poor quality, to the extent that it is serious, that will tend to put downward pressure on the futures market." The country, still suffering the after-effects of a 2002-03 civil war, launched a programme in March aimed at improving cocoa quality as some 17 percent of the nation's beans are exported in poor condition. But cooperative managers, agronomists and exporters told Reuters during a tour this week of Ivory Coast's main growing regions the problem of poor quality will linger next season due to a lack of expertise among farmers, impassable roads, and fierce competition among exporters. "The quality problem will continue next season because very few farmers comply with the standards for harvesting, fermentation and drying due to a lack of training," said N'Zebo Malan, manager of a 711-member growing cooperative. The issue could prevent Ivory Coast farmers from cashing in on what is expected to be a robust main crop harvest of over 900,000 tonnes, thus restricting re-investment in their farms. "Growing cocoa requires an understanding of how to properly maintain a field, from how to pick all the way to how to conserve," said agronomist and analyst Albert Konan. "This isn't the case for most growers in Daloa," he said of one of Ivory Coast's top growing regions. Benchmark cocoa futures on ICE climbed to a one-year high of $2,999 a tonne earlier this month, boosted by fund buying and concerns that the El Nino weather pattern could have an adverse impact on global production. Prices remain within striking distance of that peak, trading around $34 higher at $2,949 a tonne on Friday. The lack of expertise and investment threatens to make Ivory Coast's quality problems a long-term issue. "There's a huge issue of aging trees, disease-prone trees, and a lack of husbandry," said Kona Haque, an analyst for Macquarie Bank in London. "They could end up in structural decline. I don't think they will because it's too valuable a sector in terms of exports, but it is a very trouble-prone commodity in Africa." Several roads in the centre-western cocoa region have become impassable after years of heavy rains. Trucks are reluctant to go in those regions, leaving beans to deteriorate on the bush. "Many villages around Daloa have a lot of cocoa, but these villages are difficult to access because the roads have not been maintained for several years," Malan said. "The trucks will not go there for fear of being damaged. The result is deteriorating cocoa in the bush or farmers trying to get supply out by bicycle or scooter," Malan added. A purchasing manager of a European exporter based in Daloa added that fierce competition between exporters had led some of them to buy cocoa of poor quality. "Because of the intense competition between exporters, many buyers are taking beans from the planters that are not properly dried and drying them in their ovens," said the exporter. That trend only encouraged small growers to do a poor job of drying their beans, he added.
