Ivory Coast Produces Record Cocoa

The cocoa crop of Ivory Coast, the world’s biggest producer, increased 28.5% to a record 2.15 million tons in the 2016-17 season, the national Coffee and Cocoa Council said. Exports increased by 23.3% to 1.9 million tons, helping to raise the overall gross income of the country’s producers by 28.6% to 2.013 trillion CFA francs ($3.8 billion), compared to 1.565 trillion the previous season, AFP reported. But the year was “marked by a deep crisis,” said Lambert Kouassi Konan, chairman of the board of directors at industry regulator Coffee and Cocoa Council, because world prices of “brown gold” fell by more than a third. While the minimum price guaranteed to farmers was 1,100 CFA francs per kilo at the start of the 2016-17 season, the Ivorian government had to lower the price to 700 CFA francs in April due to falling prices in international markets, which was linked to overproduction in relation to demand and aggravated by the weakness of the pound against the euro, Konan said.