Sao Paulo, Oct 30 - Brazil's 2009/10 cocoa harvest will be smaller than the previous season's, growers and analysts say, as witch's broom disease continues to sap vigor from the trees following mixed weather conditions.
Dry weather was seen as responsible for a slightly smaller mid-crop, which ended last month, while plentiful rains in the developmental stage of the main crop now being harvested had helped fungal witch's broom to thrive, analysts said.
Almost all Brazilian cocoa production is consumed domestically, but the country also tops up with imports, depending on the size of its own harvests. Tight global supplies have pushed world cocoa prices near 30-year highs.
"Compared to last year, we are seeing a drop (in production)," said Saskia Korink, chairwoman of Brazil's Association of Cocoa Processing Industries.
She said the AIPC was working with an estimate of 150,000 to 160,000 tonnes for the entire 12-month season, which runs from May to April in Brazil. That would compare with an estimated production of 165,000 tonnes in 2008/09, she said.
In Bahia state, the epicentre of Brazil's cocoa production, Adonias de Castro, head of the CEPEC cocoa research center, said its data pointed to a fall for the state's main crop output to 40,000 tonnes from 44,000 last year. He said the mid-crop that just ended had probably turned out around 60,000 tonnes.
"This harvest maintains the tendency of a decrease (in Bahia) ... It has been raining and this favors witch's broom," he said, adding despondency was still widespread in Bahia's cocoa sector with rampant disease and lack of government help.
PARA PROMISE
Unusually, Brazil's main crop is now the smaller of the two annual production cycles, with the mid crop usually turning out about 50 percent more.
Farmer Gerson Marques who farms cocoa in Ilheus, one of Bahia state's main cocoa zones, estimated his production would rise this year, possibly to 27 tonnes from 23 last year.
"It is visibly better than last year. We don't have much of a reference because it goes up and down from one year to the next with the disease," he said. His farm also receives tourists curious to learn about the main ingredient in chocolate.
A steady rise in production in Para state, farther north, supported by steady government investment in small farms tended by families, meant it was accounting for a steadily higher proportion of Brazil's cocoa output.
Its younger orchards have in many cases been planted with trees bred for their ability to resist witch's broom disease, which devastated Brazil's cocoa output in the 1990s and relegated it from No. 2 global producer to No. 6.
"Para is growing year after year. What we can say is that the disease has less effect there. It is not that it doesn't exist, but that it has less effect on productivity," the AIPC's Korink said.