Abidjan, Oct 31 - Disease, delays, a farmers' strike and management reshuffles -- the new cocoa season in Ivory Coast has had its share of disruption, and the amount of beans ready for export is well down on this time last year.
Still, behind those immediate concerns are more fundamental difficulties in the world's No. 1 grower that higher prices and revamped administrative bodies may not be able to quickly solve, farmers and analysts said on Friday.
Unusually wet weather in the weeks leading up to the October start of the 2008/09 marketing season is one reason why this year's harvest may be lower than last year's.
August and September in the west African country are normally sunny months, but this year saw heavy rainfall, which not only encouraged the spread of disease but also retarded pod development.
"There was lots of rain in August and September, and very little sunshine, which slowed the maturing of the pods," said Albert Konan, analyst for a growing cooperative.
Pods need an average of four hours of sun per day to mature, he said.
Aside from the weather, the condition of the cocoa plants themselves is a factor in low yields, Konan said.
According to the most recent figures from exporters, 63,000 tonnes of cocoa are at ports ready for shipment, compared with almost 170,000 tonnes at this time last year. Disease and an onging farmers' blockade on deliveries have played a part, but there are fewer beans in the bush.
In London, Laurent Pipitone, a senior statistician at the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO), told Reuters bean arrivals at Ivorian ports had declined from this time last year.
"So far the flow of cocoa beans arriving to the ports to Abidjan and San Pedro has been very low, lower than expected," Pipitone said.
"I guess that the strike (blockade) has had a significant impact on the crop arriving."
However, the strike was not expected to have a big effect on the market as demand for beans had fallen due to a slowdown in consumer spending on chocolate products, Pipitone added.
Innocent Zamble, a farmer in the eastern Ivorian region of Meagui, said the reduction in output was also due to old trees.
Farmers also say they have not been able to maintain their crops as carefully as they would like.
"Plantations aren't as well looked after as they were in the past because planters don't have enough money to do it," said Attoungbre Kouame, a farmer in Daloa, a key cocoa region.
"That explains why production is so weak right now."
Too much of the cocoa that does arrive at ports is of poor quality, an exporter said, with deliveries containing a greater than acceptable quantity of mouldy beans.
"To be able to buy cocoa, you have to find good quality material, and that's rare," said the purchasing manager at a European exporting firm.
"Quality is average. I'd refuse to accept a shipment that contains 18 percent mouldy beans -- that's six times the norm."