The chocolate and cocoa industry has pledged $3m in new funds to global cocoa sustainability as major firms including Mondelez, Hershey and Cargill talk about their new initiatives.
Global confectionery supplier Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) is injecting US$4.4m (€3m) into its Ivory Coast cocoa programme as the country tries to recover from its recent civil turmoil and an EU ban on one of the region’s most important exports.
Delivery of cocoa bean supplies to ports in the Ivory Coast appears to be unaffected by the recent political turmoil following last month’s election in the West African country.
Rabobank has warned that cocoa prices will respond if there is a return to civil war in the Ivory Coast as this could impede cocoa exports onto the world market.
Cocoa futures in New York hit their lowest price since September yesterday on signs of increased production in Ivory Coast, which is the leading global supplier.
Democrats Tom Harkin and Eliot L. Engel wrote a hard-hitting piece
in the LA Times on Monday about the human cost of the chocolate
trade, but the cocoa industry has hit back by reaffirming its
commitment to responsible farming.
Prices remain steady for cocoa, despite news that the start of the
new cocoa harvesting season from the world's biggest producer,
Ivory Coast, has been delayed due to a dispute.
Hanging as a persistent threat to the chocolate industry witches'
broom disease is capable of wiping out entire cacao crops and
sending the price of chocolate rocketing. Despite ongoing research
into the threat confirmed by the...
War and disease have marked volatile prices for cocoa in the past
three years, peaking at 17 year highs in 2002 when the Ivory Coast
?source of two fifths of the world cocoa crop ?endured civil war.
Research into genomes could contribute...