Ivory Coast, Ghana cocoa mid-crops to fall sharply

Ivory Coast and Ghana's cocoa mid-crops are expected to fall sharply this season due to dry weather and the impact of a severe Harmattan wind, the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO) and industry sources said this week.

Cocoa beans

The world's two top cocoa growers have been hit by a long Harmattan this year, a dusty wind that sweeps in from the Sahara and can sap soil moisture and reduce the size of cocoa beans.
"We do not expect the mid-crop harvest to be as high as last year in Ivory Coast when it was 514,000 tonnes," Jean-Marc Anga, Executive Director of inter-governmental body ICCO said in an interview on Thursday. "In Ghana, it's a similar situation."
Several other industry sources echoed Anga's view in interviews with Reuters this week.
"With these bad weather conditions going on for five months, our calculations give us a dip of about 100,000 tonnes," said an exporter, referring to a near 20 percent drop expected from Ivory Coast's 2014/15 mid-crop harvest.
For Ghana, where dry conditions have prevailed for longer than in its neighbour, the sources said they expected output to fall by around 35-45 percent from the mid-crop average of about 170,000 tonnes.
That would amount to a fall of about 100,000 tonnes.