Ivory Coast Cocoa Areas Getting Sun to Allow Bean Drying

(Bloomberg) – Cocoa areas in Ivory Coast, the world’s largest producer, are getting enough sun to allow drying of beans and wet weather is less frequent.

Rainfall averaged 4.1 millimeters (0.16 inch) a day in 15 cocoa-growing areas Oct. 20-26, down from 5.9 millimeters a day the previous week, according to CICO Services, an agronomy intelligence agency based in Abidjan, the commercial capital. The average temperature was 31 degrees Celsius (87.8 degrees Fahrenheit), unchanged on the week.

“The sun is shining, which is good for the drying of beans,” Tiegba Soumahoro, who owns an 8-hectare cocoa plantation in Aboisso, in the southeast of the country, said by phone. “The rain has fallen about one of every four days in the past 10 days.”

Cocoa futures traded in London have climbed 11 percent this year. Ivory Coast’s crop will be 1.6 million metric tons in 2014-15, 8.1 percent lower than a year earlier, Ecobank said in a report e-mailed yesterday.

“The current weather is good for cocoa,” Georges Mabea, who farms 13 hectares in the village of Yepleu, near the border with Liberia, said by phone. “It is hot during the daytime, and the nights are cool. Some pods are bright green on the trees, while others are ripening.”