Farmers in a key cocoa-growing area of top producer Ivory Coast are happy with high prices seen in the 2001/02 season and don’t want to return to the price stabilisation system dismantled in 1999.
But they are concerned about the future of the sector after a damning internal audit recently accused one of the main farmers’ associations, Anaproci, of mismanaging funds.
Victor Kaye, one of a group of growers who meet to discuss the coffee and cocoa sector, said that, as usual, it was the growers who were losing out.
”When we didn’t have any money (when prices were low) we fought and argued. Now we are getting money and nothing has changed,” he told Reuters on Monday. ”We need to sit down together — all the operators in the sector — and talk.”
But Mathurin Kouassi Kouame, manager of the COOPADJI cooperative in Divo, which has 1 000 active members, said that talking would not help.
”Even if we are angry, it doesn’t really make any difference. They (Anaproci) just pay people off and create divisions to get a stronger hold of the sector,” he said.
The government report, leaked last week, accused Anoproci of spending money destined for farmers through a complex web of shell companies.
It sent shockwaves through the cocoa community and rattled donors who only recently resumed aid after a 1999 military coup.
FARMERS SEE BENEFITS
Ivory Coast, which grows just over 40% of the world’s cocoa, was forced to privatise the sector in 1999 after years of state intervention to stabilise the price paid to farmers.
Shortly afterwards, world prices fell sharply and many growers blamed liberalisation for the drop. Anaproci and others lobbied the government for a return to the previous system.
But over the last crop season farmers have tasted the upside of privatisation — significantly higher prices — and like it.
”Prices are good, very good even…much better than in previous years,” said Kaye.
COOPADJI’s Kouame said that farmers in the region had finally realised they could negotiate higher prices.
Many did not understand during the first few years of privatisation that the previous guaranteed farmgate price no longer existed and they could now demand higher prices, if international prices rose.
Intense competition as international exporters scrambled to grab beans up country, due to initial fears of a global supply shortage, pushed producer prices further north.
”You’re seeing farmers becoming speculators…even the tiniest of smallholders,” Kouame said.
Kouame, whose cooperative delivers around 5 000 tons of cocoa to a major exporter during the main crop season, said growers did not want to go back to the previous system.
”They have seen money this year. They have built houses, they have learnt how to get more money…When prices are high they are laughing…and when they fall, they will cry,” he said.
Under the state-managed system, when prices fell, the Caistab marketing board was supposed to support farmers by making up the difference from a reserve fund.
”But when prices fell (in the early 1990’s), it didn’t go very far, because there was no money left,” Kouame said. ”So farmers are prepared, they have no expectations.” – Reuters