Ivory Coast Cocoa Farmers Unable to Deliver Beans on Rain

(Bloomberg) – Floods in Ivory Coast, the world’s biggest cocoa producer, are keeping trucks from delivering cocoa beans from some farms.

Rain averaged 12 millimeters (0.5 inch) a day in 15 cocoa-growing areas in the week ended July 6, up from 7 millimeters a day the week before, according to CICO Services, an agronomy company in Abidjan, the commercial capital. Combined precipitation rose to 1,238 milliters from 657 millimeters.

Downpours over the past month have damaged roads leading to the San Pedro port and preventing beans from drying and fermenting properly. Exporters rejected at least one-third of bean deliveries to ports at San Pedro and Abidjan at the end of June, according to Ecobank Group, the Lome, Togo-based lender.

“The roads aren’t motorable,” Idrissa Sabaye, a farmer in the western town of Duekoue, said by phone. “The trucks cannot access remote villages to collect their harvest.”

Ivory Coast will produce a record 1.6 million to 1.67 million metric tons in the 2013-14 season after regular rain helped pod development, according to a report yesterday by Ecobank, citing the government regulator Conseil du Cafe-Cacao. The CCC sold more than 1.05 million tons of the 2014-15 crop, allowing to raise the fixed farmer price to more than 800 CFA francs per kilograms, it said.