By Maytaal Angel
BRUSSELS, April 24 (Reuters) - Farmers who grow about 40% of the world's cocoa are earning record prices for their crops and could raise output significantly as early as next season, a leading cocoa expert said on the sidelines of the World Cocoa Conference in Brussels.
Tropical Research Services’ Steve Wateridge said farmers outside top producers Ivory Coast and Ghana now have more than enough funds to fertilise and spray their trees with pesticide, as well as to prune.
Such crop care can boost yields significantly in the season after they are implemented, leading to higher output.
This contrasts with increased plantings, which typically takes three to four years to result in increased output.
Wateridge cautioned, however, that it was too early to say whether the global cocoa market, which is widely expected to register a third successive deficit this season, will manage to avoid a fourth deficit next season.
He noted that farmers in Ivory Coast and Ghana, who together produce about 60% of the world’s cocoa, have yet to benefit in full from record global prices because of how their governments buy, sell and set farmgate prices.
This means farmers might not be in a position to invest in their cocoa trees.
The world’s top two producers are also battling adverse weather and a crippling outbreak of swollen shoot disease on an estimated 20-40% of their cocoa-growing land.
No. 2 producer Ghana’s cocoa industry has also been ravaged by illegal gold mining and sector mismanagement.
As a result of the troubles in the world’s two biggest producers, seen as structural or long term by many market participants, cocoa prices have nearly tripled over the past six months, hitting profits for leading chocolate makers such as Hershey and Mondelez .
(Reporting by Maytaal Angel Editing by Nigel Hunt and David Goodman )
((nigel.hunt@thomsonreuters.com; +44 (0) 7990 561421; Reuters Messaging: nigel.hunt.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))
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