Abidjan, October 20, 2008 - Ivory Coast cocoa farmers seeking higher prices for their beans blocked deliveries to the nation's second port of San Pedro on Monday, raising the risk of lower bean quality levels, exporters said on Monday.
Groups of protesting farmers stopped trucks carrying cocoa from entering San Pedro, which serves the western Ivorian cocoa belt and handles nearly half of the harvest in the West African state, the world's No. 1 cocoa grower.
A union representing western farmers, SAPICOCI, had called the protest to try to force exporters and buyers to pay the full 700 CFA francs per kg guideline farmgate price set by cocoa sector authorities at the start of the 2008/09 season.
Bean deliveries to the main port of Abidjan were not affected, exporters said.
But they expressed fears that the cocoa delivery blockade at San Pedro, which further complicates a slow and chaotic start to the new season, would undermine even more the already low quality level of beans being received at ports.
"This strike is going to drag down the quality of the cocoa that comes out afterwards, because the beans which are already ready and stored in the bush are not in good shape," the sales director of a European export company in Abidjan told Reuters.
"So you can imagine what they will be like after two weeks of storage, in unsuitable conditions," he added.
At least one major exporter at San Pedro said his company had temporarily closed its warehouse there to avoid trouble.
"The growers are in the (road) corridor (leading to San Pedro port) now and they are filtering entries. All cocoa trucks are being turned to the side of the road," another export company director with operations at San Pedro said.
Ivory Coast's cocoa management committee raised the reference farmgate price by 40 percent to 700 CFA francs per kg when it opened the 2008/09 season on October 5.
PRICE IMPASSE SLOWS TRADE
The reference price is a recommended minimum rather than an officially enforced rate in Ivory Coast's liberalised system, but industry officials have urged farmers to seek high prices.
Many farmers in the bush have been refusing to sell below the guideline price, while exporters and upcountry buyers argue that current market conditions make it impossible to offer growers the full recommended 700 CFA francs per kg.
The delayed start to the 2008/09 year and the impasse over prices has slowed early season traffic of Ivorian beans.
Exporters estimated that only 49,000 tonnes of beans had arrived at the country's ports by October 19 in the new season, less than half the 120,488 tonnes received in the same period of the previous season.
"It's clearly all related to the 'fixed' (but non-mandatory) price which is too removed from reality and is messing up everybody. This can't continue like this," another export company sales department director said.
The run-up to the 2008/09 season in Ivory Coast was plagued by strikes, delays and a corruption scandal that led to the arrest on graft charges of leaders of the cocoa sector.
A presidential election, in which President Laurent Gbagbo is expected to stand for re-election, was scheduled for November 30.
But electoral officials now say it will be postponed to 2009 because of delays in voter registration and disarmament programmes that form part of the peace plan aimed at uniting the country after a divisive 2002/03 civil war.