30 • Latin America • C&CI March 2012
Latin American mini- boom continues
n Brazil, which used to be the world’s largest grower and exporter, producers in a number of states are reporting new plant- ings and plans for a revival in the industry. Elsewhere in the region, smaller producers in the Caribbean are producing more and more top quality cocoa beans, whilst in Ecuador, production is on the increase.
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It has been a good year for cocoa in Latin America. Despite the ongoing challenge of climate change and weather-related prob- lems, which have caused havoc for some of the regions producers, the overall trend con- tinues to be one of increasing output.
Resurgence in Brazil
After seeing its share of production in the world market fall to as little as 10 per cent in the last decade, after witches’ broom disease badly affected it and wiped out about 75 per cent of the Brazilian cocoa industry, Latin American growers have repositioned them- selves and now produce 14-15 per cent of the total output.
"Production has increased slightly in absolute terms, from 3.6 million tonnes in 2007-2008 to a projected 4.0 million tonnes in 2011-2012. The increase in production has not been linear, however, and has fluctuated in various patterns among the different regions," said the World Cocoa Foundation (WCF) in its latest quarterly market report, describing worldwide production figures. In Latin America, production has increased 25 per cent in the last five years and is expected to reach a level of 563,000 tonnes in the 2011-2012 crop cycle, up from 558,000 tonnes in the last crop cycle, and from 450,000 tonnes in the 2007-2008 cocoa year. In Ecuador, production is expected to increase for the fourth consecutive year, with 2010-2011 output forecast to grow 6.3 per cent to 170,000 tonnes. This compares to last year’s harvest of 160,000 tonnes, and is up 48 per cent on the five years since the 2007- 2008 crop of 115,000 tonnes, the WCF said. "In the short term we are seeing cocoa pro- duction increasing in Ecuador where it contin- ues to consolidate the growth seen in the last few years," Robert Peck, Senior Director of
Paolo Oliari, seen here, believes that over the next few years Brazilian farmers will become competitive in the Brazilian domestic market
Operations for the WCF, told C&CI. A large part of this increase in production in Ecuador can be attributed to the work of the ‘Success Alliance’ which, through ACDI/VOCA, has been supported by a US$5 million ‘Food For Progress’ grant from the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
Intercropping cocoa
Ecuador has an estimated 100,000 produc- ers, of whom nearly 90 per cent are small- holders who grow cocoa in an ‘intercropping’ arrangement on land in the central provinces of Guayas, Manabi, Los Rios and Esmeraldas.
"Most cocoa farmers in these regions have cocoa trees that, before exposure to the project, produced less than half of their potential," said a report from ACDI/VOCA. Through the project, the ACDI/VOCA helped train more than 21,000 farmers in
improved husbandry techniques such as the control of pests and post-harvesting processing.
Before the project, "post-harvesting han- dling and processing had resulted in low quality cocoa and the cocoa marketing chain was hampered by a lack of support mechanisms for small producers," it said, adding that the programme is also "strengthening or developing seven cocoa marketing associations."
The funds from the US also helped pro- ducers in Ecuador undertake much-needed renovation and replanting programmes for older and unproductive trees. At the time that the four-year project started in 2004, the age of trees was one of the main rea- sons why production was in decline. A total of one million new trees were planted in Ecuador between 2004 and 2008 and it is production from this new tree population that is now starting to show up in the inter- national production statistics.
Latin American cocoa farmers continue on the road to
recovery, with the continent slowly but surely boosting its share of the world cocoa market, as Maja Wallengren reports
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