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GOURMET NEWS JANUARY 2015 www.gourmetnews.com GENERAL NEWS 8 Cocoa Producers Continued from PAGE 1 world are Côte d'Ivoire (37.4 percent of global production) and Ghana (20.7 per- cent), with Cameroon (5 percent) and Nigeria (4.6 percent) coming in fourth and fifth. Although none of these countries are currently experiencing major Ebola out- breaks, all of them are in close proximity to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, where the majority of Ebola-related deaths have occurred. In fact, Côte d'Ivoire, the most important cocoa producing country in the world, shares a 445-mile border with Liberia, the country most severely im- pacted by Ebola, as well as a 379-mile bor- der with Guinea. In Côte d'Ivoire, the potential spread of the Ebola virus is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the multitude of factors that have the potential to cripple the na- tion's cacao industry. Experts predict cacao production in the nation to fall 8 percent from the previous year's harvest in the 2014-2015 growing season. The antici- pated drop in production has been attrib- uted primarily to the migration of Swollen Shoot disease, a virus that attacks cacao plants, into the nation's western cocoa belt, reducing yield and ultimately killing trees. Cacao farmers in Côte d'Ivoire are being forced to cut down and replant infected trees. This is expected to limit production for at least the next several years. Côte d'Ivoire has unfortunately become a poster child for the social and environ- mental woes currently impacting the global cacao market. However, cacao producers in the country are hard at work today show- ing that the country is at the forefront of the movement to tackle these challenges head on and preserve the long term sus- tainability of the industry. The government of Côte d'Ivoire recently introduced stricter controls over the country's cocoa industry, installing new quality standards, working to establish minimum prices for farmers and promoting Ivoirian-grown cacao on the global stage. The state is simply no longer willing to allow the market to entirely dic- tate the fate of the country's most important industry. When it comes to confronting Ebola, West African cocoa producers are refusing to sit back and watch idly while the virus makes its way across the continent. Global cocoa producers are actively working to protect farmers and the industry itself from being negatively impacted by the spread of the disease. The World Cocoa Foundation, an alliance of 115 chocolate companies rep- resenting 80 percent of the global cocoa market, recently raised $800,000 to fight Ebola and treat infected individuals in West Africa. Because cacao is often cultivated on small plots, with farmers then bringing their product to market through middle- men, a disease like Ebola that attacks the population broadly and limits movement and interpersonal contact could devastate this industry. Ghanaian and Ivoirian grow- ers are thus fighting to ensure that their countries are not the next battleground for the disease. "We look at the region as being very im- portant," said Bill Guyton, President of WCF. "We thought it was a good move on our part from a humanitarian perspective to help with the ongoing efforts on Ebola relief. We were happy to raise that money, and 100 percent of money raised has al- ready been donated to two organizations: Caritas and The American Red Cross and Red Crescent." Although the three countries most se- verely impacted by Ebola produce only a miniscule percentage of global cacao stocks, and there have been no reported cases in the two largest cacao-producing countries in West Africa, Guyton believes that the importance of West Africa as a cacao-producing region necessitates a strong industry response to the epidemic. "When we first heard of the crisis of Ebola in West Africa, we were very concerned," he said. "It's something we need to keep our eyes on moving forward. There are pos- itive signs that Ebola efforts underway are making the positive changes we were hop- ing for." Fighting plant disease and meeting global demand for the bean are proving to be increasingly difficult tasks to accom- plish, but producers are doing their best to protect their trees and increase their har- vests. The WCF is working to promote global cacao production through the recent introduction of its Cocoa Action plan. Ac- cording to Guyton, a number of factors are contributing to limited cacao production in West Africa and throughout the world, in- cluding plant diseases, pestilence, aging (less productive) plants, lack of necessary fertilizers and an aging population of farm- ers. Through Cocoa Action, the WCF is working to solve these problems, targeting 300,000 farmers in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, promoting productivity and com- munity development and also working to eliminate child labor, improve access to ed- ucation and incorporate more women as active participants in the industry. WCF is also working more closely with the govern- ments of these two countries in the service of its objectives. "We see a bright future for working more collaboratively and closely with govern- ments to really make a transformational change, and now is the time when we really need to step up our efforts," said Guyton. "We're looking forward to making as big an impact as we can in the coming years." For many in the cocoa industry, one specific move that is being promoted as a solution to the problem of diseased and less productive cacao plants is the move toward the propagation of hybrid cacao, a new breed of plant that has been engi- neered to be disease-free. Still, others are conversely promoting the deliberate propagation of heirloom cacao varietals. The Fine Chocolate Industry Associa- tion, for example, is spearheading the Heirloom Cacao Preservation Initiative, an effort to study heirloom cacao and tar- get for production the heartiest plants and the ones that produce the best-tast- ing chocolate. According to Ed Seguine, FCIA member and President of Seguine Cacao, Cocoa and Chocolate Advisers, as researchers focus solely on producing hearty, disease- resistant cacao cultivars without consider- ing taste as an important factor in breeding, the result will be a product that ultimately pleases no one. "There is a risk that in breeding, we will breed and lose all the diversity that we have in the field," he said. "There is a basic adage of breeding that you get what you measure. The great risk is that as you proceed with the breed- ing programs that exist today, if we don't include flavor as one of the measured pa- rameters, the risk is we will shoot our- selves in the foot and result in producing 'the proverbial brown stuff.'" Research shows, Seguine argues, that focusing on cacao sustainability and fla- vor need not be mutually exclusive mis- sions. He points in particular to the work of Wilberth Phillips, Chief of Genetic Im- provement at CATIE (Tropical Agriculture Research and Education Center) in Costa Rica. In his work on breeding cacao plants that are resistant to Frosty Pod, Phillips was able to include taste as a measured criterion. Unbeknownst to Seguine, Phillips later submitted choco- late made from the cultivars he developed to the Salon du Chocolate Cocoa Excel- lence Program (of which Seguine himself is chair) for judging. The result: the dis- ease-resistant samples won awards for their fruit and floral flavor notes. "The FCIA is obsessively bent on doing everything that we can possibly do to preserve flavor. We need to preserve and measure flavors as part of the breed- ing program," said Seguine. "If you in- clude flavor as one of the criteria, you will preserve cocoa flavor diversity. We've done it." Still, if the global consumer demand for chocolate continues to outpace cacao pro- duction, and if prices subsequently rise to a level that makes the product a luxury good, food companies may have no choice but to seek out more affordable and readily available chocolate substi- tutes. Companies that use cocoa butter in their products, for example, are increas- ingly turning to palm oil as an alternative ingredient. In addition, many confection- ers are experimenting with another bean, carob, as a potential stand-in for choco- late in their recipes for classic sweets. Colorado-based Missy J's is just one ex- ample of a specialty confectioner that is turning carob into a craveable chocolate substitute, crafting peanut butter cups and truffles that are entirely free of cocoa. "As the chocolate shortage story be- comes more prominent, I think people are going to look for an alternative. They will want something that will still give them the same chocolate flavor and find the carob of today may be better for them," said Jodi Feinhor-Dennis, founder of Missy J's. "I've used my design and food skills to match the flavor profile [of chocolate]. Most carob from the past had a grainy, bitter taste. I just used every skill I had to make it taste de- lectable … Some people don't even know it's not chocolate." Of course, chocolate and cocoa-based products are certainly not going anywhere anytime soon, which means that confec- tioners are going to have to do their best to find their own unique ways to weather the oncoming storm. For many compa- nies, the only thing to do is to raise prices in the candy aisle to make up for the higher prices being paid for cacao on the commodities market. However, some American specialty companies are doing what they can to avoid price increases, ab- sorbing the increased costs themselves. New York-based Barkeater Chocolates, for example, has pledged to keep prices the same, despite the fact that it will almost certainly experience smaller profits at least in the near future. "The cost of being a chocolate company has skyrocketed, but rather than pass it all on to the consumer, we have taken a smaller margin and have chosen to focus on our most popular products," said Jim Morris, co-owner with wife Deb of Barkeater Chocolates. "We will continue to offer our popular products without changing the formulation or size. Chocolate should never be an elite item for a select few," added Deb. Despite the multitude of challenges currently facing cacao farmers, cocoa pro- ducers and chocolate companies across the globe, at least for the time being, the prospect of a major cocoa shortage that would broadly impact the consumer land- scape is a small one. The largest chocolate manufacturer in North America, Her- shey's, has publicly stated that there is enough cocoa already in the United States, that there will be no disruption to chocolate supplies in this country at least until late 2015. This is true even if there is a major crisis affecting the industry, such as Ebola spreading into the major cocoa-producing countries of West Africa. This means that at least for the next year, outside of relatively small price increases, the average consumer should be unaware of the problems confronting global cocoa production. GN

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