2024-03-31 05:05:00
In 1519 Hernán Cortez wrote to King Charles V highlighting the energy that a cup of Xocolatl provided for “a soldier to march for a whole day.” This was the energetic beginning of chocolate.
A century later, in 1615, Anne of Austria popularized the exotic drink in the courts of France and Spain, with the famous chocolates. In the late 1600s, chocolate was known throughout Europe and there was already an over-demand for cocoa. Guayaquil appears on the scene and by 1730 it is already being cultivated in Africa, which currently produces 70% of the world’s cocoa, with old and sick cocoa plantations, dependent on increasingly expensive fertilizers and fungicides with an increasingly poor population, which in no way It benefits from the current high prices of the seed, which this week will reach $10,000 per ton, compared to the $2,700 it cost the previous November.
Evidently there is a speculative element that certifies a tragedy foretold. Just like what happens in Ecuador: when the price of potatoes rises, everyone plants potatoes and in the next harvest the oversupply lowers the price, so few plant and ensure shortages in the next harvest with potatoes at skyrocketing prices.
The entry of 8,000 million dollars of Risk Capital into the world of cocoa has forced an increase in the price of cocoa beans, which excites farmers in the 18 producing countries located between the 20° North and 20° parallels. South, to increase their cocoa crops, so that after the drop in prices that will come this year, in 3 years there will be an oversupply of cocoa that will once again motivate the abandonment of the cocoa plantations, letting the pests damage them, not renewing old plants and leave the door open for speculators to buy cheap cocoa, inflate prices and when they have earned enough, sell, driving the market crazy and damaging good cultivation practices, destroying post-harvest processes and eliminating differences between varieties and qualities.
This is what happens in Ecuador. We are in a voracious harvest of cocoa, without even fermenting it, regardless of the variety and selling the quintal at four times its traditional value. Evidently, adjustments in the price of chocolate are being forced around the world, which will cause a reduction in demand.
Over production of cocoa + poor quality of the seeds + abandonment of processes + decrease in chocolate consumption. We are on the verge of the perfect storm.
#Tourism #Bitter #cocoa #route