Shipments of cocoa beans from Nigeria have slowed to a trickle as dealers in the commercial capital Lagos await the first deliveries of the mid-crop, traders said on Monday. Prices for beans at the farm gate have risen steadily towards 180,000 naira ($1,353) per tonne in line with rising world markets, they said. "It's normal to have a break between the main crop and the light crop," said one Lagos-based trader. "There is not much coming out."
Stock levels in Lagos have subsided in the last six weeks after heavy shipments in January and February, and now stand around 40,000 tonnes, the trader added.
Dealers said they expected the Nigerian crop this year to total around 200,000 tonnes, roughly in line with last year's figure.
But farmers in south-west Ondo state which accounts for roughly half of the Nigerian crop fear output could be hit by lack of funds and farm inputs.
Amos Adedeye, chairman of the Ondo state branch of the Cocoa Farmers Association of Nigeria, said many farmers abandoned some of their plots after failing to raise enough funds to hire labourers to work on them. Others had no money for chemicals to spray their farms to reduce disease and improve mid-crop harvest, he said.
"I am expecting only two tonnes instead of five, because I had no money to pay for labour on one of my farms and buy chemicals. Otherwise the rains have been favourable," Adedeye told Reuters.