Thrillers and Suspense
Here’s a bit of trade news that usually falls by the way side. After opening the border between Liberia and the Côte d’Ivoire, cocoa farmers in Liberia have discovered that they can get more money selling their crop to Ivorian dealers. The difference is significant–$2.50/kilo instead of $1.00/kilo in their home country.
Quite a few reports recently claimed that chocolate is recession-proof. It made sense, sort of. When everything else is going down the tube, there’s always chocolate–a little treat in hard times and not too expensive. But it it turned out to be just hearsay.
Continue reading “Chocolate Apparently Not Recession-Proof After All”
According to a report in Agence France Press, an increasing number of farmers in the Côte d’Ivoire are abandoning cocoa farming in favor or growing rubber trees. If that trend is indeed as widespread as the article claims–hundreds of hectares every year–then this important news.
I reported last fall that Ivorian farmers, upset over the fact that traders were not paying them the indicative price set by the Cocoa Management Committee, had blocked cocoa deliveries to ports.
Now they are threatening a blockade again, this time to protest the fact that they have not received the funding to buy fertilizer. According to Bloomsberg, Christophe Gbe, president of the Ivorian Federation of Coffee and Cocoa Producers, threatened to stop all cocoa deliveries and to expand the action to all producer delivered to ports should the Cocoa Management Committee not accede to the farmer’s demands.
Farmers on the ground, however, seem less concerned with the blockade. Some growers have announced support for the action but likely will not participate in the blockades. Others have yet to get ready for any action. No word yet how this will affect cocoa prices for the next months.
Just as Ghana celebrated its second real transition of power to President John Atta Mills, its neighbor, the Côte d’Ivoire, continues to struggle with preparations for the long delayed election. The country has yet to settle the divisions that caused the 2002-03 civil war and despite the support of the United Nations, the preparations for country-wide elections have not made much progress.
Continue reading “Côte d’Ivoire Elections will be delayed again”
