US cocoa futures ended firm in range-bound trading on Monday, with light speculative fund buying on news of striking farmers in top grower Ivory Coast trying to disrupt deliveries, traders said.
On the New York Board of Trade, the most-active December cocoa contract rose $9 to settle at $1,456 a tonne, after trading within a narrow range of $1,446 to $1,468. March 2005 gained $8 to $1,471, while distant futures advanced $4 to $7.
Cocoa prices drifted upward after farmers in Ivory Coast, which produces about 40 percent of the world's cocoa, started their planned strike over farm-gate prices. Yet traders said they doubted any disruptions would last, because it was still too in the season and the growers would eventually sell for need of money.
"The news available doesn't seem to be able to incite a (price) breakout either way, because origins don't have a lot of quantity to unload at this point in time and industry are comfortable they don't show a need to pay up," one trader said.
"Warehouse stocks are in decline, but there is enough availability world-wide now to keep everybody complacent," he said. Ivory Coast police quickly stepped in to break up several hundred farmers from trying to stop trucks carrying cocoa into the main city of Abidjan.
The farmers, demanding higher farm-gate prices, were expected to hold talks with exporters and the government later on Monday, reported Reuters in Abidjan. The farmers threatened to strike last week after officials had set an indicative minimum farm-gate price of 390 CFA francs (about 74 cents) for the new season.