cocoa – Michael Niemann

May 17, 2011

Ivorian Cocoa Flows Again

Just a week ago, the first cargo ship left the port of San Pedro laden with cocoa. The chocolate industry can breathe easier again and things, at least related to cocoa, are returning to normal again. That’s good news for cocoa farmers. When the embargo was put in place, the beans already sold to traders simply ended up at the port. But traders quickly stopped purchasing beans from farmers who had few options but to store them at their farm. More enterprising farmers near the Ghanian border smuggled their crop to Ghana to get paid.

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April 12, 2011

Is It Imperialism?

After almost six months, the saga of the Ivorian ill-fated election is finally over. Yesterday, April 11, Laurent Gbagbo was arrested and his decade-long reign is over. There is disagreement as to whether he was arrested by the forces supporting Ouattara or by French forces. The French, the UN and Ouattara deny it, the Gbagbo camp asserts it. In either case, there is no doubt that without French intervention, this phase of the conflict would not have come to an end so soon.

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February 4, 2011

Some Background to the Ivorian Crisis

As the standoff continues in the Côte d’Ivoire, I thought it’d be good to provide a little background. After all, there’s more to the story than a sore loser–Gbagbo–not wanting to give up his job as president. To get a little deeper, we have to look at how Côte d’Ivoire became the world’s largest cocoa producer.

Ivorian planters were initially slow to embrace cocoa and coffee as export crops, but once they did, they quickly ran up against the power of French planters who severely limited access to labor and other inputs. In response, the Ivorian planters formed the Syndicat Africain Agricole (SAA) in 1944. The SAA was more than an interest group. It was the training ground for a new nationalist planter class. The SAA also formed the basis for the Parti Democratique de Côte d’Ivoire (PDCI). Its leader, Houphouet-Boigny, ruled the country from 1960 until 1993.

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December 7, 2010

Côte d’Ivoire Tragedy Continues

Alassana Ouattara and Laurent Gbagbo on election posters. Reuters Photo

First, my apologies for the long silence of this blog. I’ve had a really busy time and blog updates have taken a back seat. But I had to add a post, now that the presidential election in the Côte d’Ivoire has deteriorated into chaos. A quick summary: after five years of delays, the presidential election finally took place on October 31. Initial reports were encouraging, there was little violence and the election seemed to proceed properly. The results let to a runoff election between the two top vote-getters: sitting President Laurent Gbagbo and opposition candidate Alassane Ouattara. The runoff election took place on November 28 and on December 2, the Ivorian Electoral Commission announced that Alassane Ouattare had won the election with 54 percent of the vote.

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October 13, 2010January 29, 2020

FLO Increases Cocoa Floor Price and Social Premium

Here’s a bit of welcome news. For the first time since 1997, the Fairtrade Labelling Organization (FLO) has increased the minimum fairtrade price for cocoa. Starting January 1, 2011, the minimum price will be $2,000/ton up from $1,600/ton. The social premium will also increase from $150/ton to $200/ton.

FLO is the global umbrella organization for all national fairtrade certifiers. It sets the fairtrade standards for the wide variety of goods now available on fairtrade terms. The increase in cocoa prices is long overdue as input costs of farmers have increased over the past thirteen years.

On a practical level, the increase of the minimum price won’t have any input as the market price continues to hover around $3,000/ton. But the increase in the social premium will have an immediate impact as cocoa farmer cooperatives will receive the social premium irrespective of the world market price.