The quality of cocoa in top grower Ivory Coast's main crop has already fallen to levels normally seen later in the year as poor weather takes its toll, raising fears for the April-to-September mid-crop, exporters and farmers said on Thursday. Exporters expect extreme temperatures and dry, dusty conditions, the result of the most severe Harmattan winds in three decades, to cause a sharp drop in the size of the mid-crop.
But if the current decline in quality also continues as many expect, much of the cocoa that is harvested may not even be suitable for processing, the grinders who buy the bulk of the mid-crop's smaller beans worry. "Generally, we start seeing these kinds of beans towards March and April, but this year it's early. It's really worrying," said the director of a San Pedro-based company that runs a processing operation.
Exporters said they were seeing a decrease in the size of beans and an increase in the levels of free fatty acids (FFA), which erode the quality of cocoa butter, the ingredient that gives chocolate its melt-in-the-mouth texture. "The worry surrounds the quality of the mid-crop beans. We've started to receive beans with FFA levels of between 1.8 and 3.2 percent," said one Abidjan-based exporter.
"We're expecting that this level will climb further during the mid-crop because the Harmattan has been so strong and long." The European Union has set a ceiling for FFAs in cocoa beans of 1.75 percent oleic acid equivalent. "There's absolutely nothing we can do with beans with an FFA level above the accepted norm and no grinder is going to compromise on that," said another exporter.
The Harmattan winds, which blow down from the Sahara each year, arrived earlier than expected in late November and have intensified in the last week, just as many farmers had hoped they were coming to an end. There is debate within the industry over what causes high FFA levels, but dry weather, exposure to black pod disease, and whether beans are broken are all believed to have an impact.
A Reuters reporter travelling in western Ivory Coast - the country's main production area - said most pods visible on plantations were small and were expected by farmers to remain underdeveloped, indicating a significant drop in bean size. Bean size is determined by counting the number of beans per 100 grammes of cocoa, known as the bean count, with a higher figure reflecting smaller bean size.
Ivory Coast's marketing board, the Coffee and Cocoa Council (CCC), has fixed a ceiling of 105 beans per 100 g for beans destined for export during the main crop and 120 beans per 100 g for the mid-crop. Grinders are allowed to buy beans with a higher bean count for processing, but smaller beans produce lower butter yields and are therefore less desirable. "This won't be a great harvest, especially in terms of bean count, which could end up being between 130 and 160 beans per 100 g," said another Abidjan exporter.
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