An obsession with cocoa prices overlooks better ways to help the poor
buyers do not usually pay their suppliers to produce something that they will never buy. Yet Nestlé, one of the world’s biggest chocolate makers, is paying 10,000 cocoa farmers in Ivory Coast to do exactly that. Among them is Tanoh Kouadio, a 45-year-old cocoa farmer whom Nestlé will pay about 67,000 west African francs to start raising chickens.. Alas, growing the beans that go into it is neither particularly profitable nor pleasurable.
Ivory Coast and Ghana hope that by enlisting other producers they will get more sway over the market. Nigeria and Cameroon are talking of joiningYet even if this time is different andmanages to push up prices, it could struggle to sustain them. Higher prices would probably encourage more farmers to plant cocoa, further oversupplying the market.
Big chocolate and cocoa processors, although paying lip service to the premium, prefer instead to publicise their own charitable programmes to help farmers. Nestlé’s programme, one of many, pays farmers like Mr Kouadio not only for diversifying but also for three other worthy activities, including pruning to improve cocoa yields and sending their kids to school.
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