With Valentines Day coming next month, and lots of chocolate gifts left under trees this past Christmas, this is a timely look at an industry struggling to keep up with demand. And the resulting pressure on pricing which the consumer will certainly see this Feb.
Cocoa's reduced production is a microcosm of the same struggles every crop faces--our failure over the past decades, to properly manage our soil, water, chemical use and cataclysmic failure to stop over producing.
The Earth has only so much to give. She has fought a brave fight in sustaining too many people who continue to over consumer. Battered and bruised, though, Mother Earth is losing the battle.
Every aspect of our life depends on proper management and use of natural resources. How many more examples do we need to see before we act bravely, decisively and remediate and restore ecological balance to our quest for quality of life?
ABANKROM, Ghana — Yaa Amekudzi bounces along dirt roads in a sport-utility vehicle from one village to the next as part of a $1 billion scramble by the world’s top chocolate makers to fix the industry’s most vexing problem.
Demand for chocolate is stronger than ever, especially now that more consumers in China and India are buying bars and bonbons long considered an unaffordable luxury. But cocoa production is down, including a steep slide last year in Ghana, the second-largest cocoa-growing country. Cocoa prices have jumped nearly 40% since the start of 2012.
As a result, the pressure is on Amekudzi and her team of five employees at Mondelez International Inc. MDLZ, -2.54% , the maker of Cadbury Dairy Milk bars and Oreo cookies, to help cocoa farmers boost their dwindling crop yields.
“They need to change the way they farm,” says Amekudzi, who runs Mondelez’s cocoa sustainability operations in Ghana. “We don’t have the forest cover we had, we don’t have the rain our grandfathers had, and the soil isn’t as fertile. ... Young people often leave to seek a better life in the city.”
She gives cocoa farmers advice on better ways to space seedlings, apply fertilizer and prune trees.
Similar instructions to farmers in neighboring Ivory Coast, the world’s No. 1 cocoa grower, have helped produce back-to-back record crops, companies say. But average crop yields are just one-third as big as they could be if all cocoa farmers in Ghana and Ivory Coast followed good agricultural practices.
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