Climate change, ageing plantations and a shortage of young farmers risk strangling Africa's cocoa industry, a top official from a bloc of 10 producer nations said. Africa produced roughly three quarters of the world's cocoa last year. Output on the continent has grown steadily over the past two decades and top growers Ivory Coast and Ghana, responsible for 60 percent of global supply, both produced record harvests in the 2011/2012 season.
But that trend could soon change as a shift in global weather patterns creates increasingly dry conditions in Africa, said Nanga Coulibaly, general secretary of the Alliance of Cocoa Producing Countries (COPAL). "There are risks. Cocoa trees like certain climatic conditions, and we're seeing that those conditions are changing in African cocoa producing countries," he told Reuters on the sidelines of a three-day meeting of agronomists in Ivory Coast.
The region's once reliable rainy seasons are now less predictable. Nearly all of Africa's cocoa producers have experienced abnormally long dry spells this year. As a result, the International Cocoa Organisation sees African production falling to 2.8 million tonnes, a drop of 12 percent from the 2010/2011 season.
"The way things are looking, there is a need to concentrate on drought-resistant (tree) varieties. This is a phenomenon that must be prevented, and work is under way towards that," he said. Even without the added concern of harsher weather conditions, replanting is a necessity, Coulibaly said. "There is a problem of ageing trees, which account for 50 to 60 percent of plantations. Those trees are either no longer doing well or are sensitive to certain diseases, and that affects production," he said.