Ivory Coast Cocoa Areas Benefited From Rains, Sunshine

(Bloomberg) – Cocoa-growing areas in Ivory Coast, the world’s largest producer, got a helpful mixture of rain and sunshine last week, farmers said.

Precipitation averaged 5.2 millimeters (0.2 inch) a day in 15 cocoa-growing areas Oct. 27 to Nov. 2, up from 4.1 millimeters a day in the previous week, according to CICO Services, an agronomy intelligence agency based in Abidjan, the commercial capital. The average temperature was 32 degrees Celsius (90 degrees Fahrenheit), up from 31 degrees last week.

“It rains but it is pretty light, and the sun shines a lot during the daytime,” Guy Tra Bi, who owns 15 hectares (37 acres) of cocoa fields in Sinfra in the center-west of the country, said by phone yesterday.

The central-western region of Gagnoa received more rain than other cocoa areas last week, with an average 7.3 millimeters a day, CICO data showed.

Ivory Coast’s southern forest areas, where most of the cocoa is grown, entered the short rainy season in mid-September. This season typically lasts until this month.

“The current weather is good,” Mathieu Eba, a farmer and head of a cocoa cooperative in the eastern region of Abengourou, said by phone yesterday. “In the past 10 days, we’ve received a lot of sun and we’ve managed to dry a part of the harvest.”

Ivory Coast cocoa farmers reap a main crop from October to March, while a smaller harvest, called the mid-crop, is produced from April to the end of September.

Increased rains in Ivory Coast over the next few days may hamper harvesting, while it will help flowering of the mid-crop, MDA Weather Services said in an e-mailed report yesterday.

Ivory Coast will supply 1.6 million metric tons of beans in the 2014-15 season, Lome, Togo-based Ecobank Group estimated in a report last week. That compares with 1.74 million tons produced in 2013-14 and 1.44 million tons the previous year, according to government figures.