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A halt to cocoa
buying in Cote D’Ivoire is leaving beans to rot in farm warehouses,
while smuggling through Ghana intensifies and some growers switch to
other crops, farmers said on Thursday.

Economic sanctions,
a cocoa export ban, and a liquidity shortage since incumbent Laurent
Gbagbo seized the central bank’s local branch has left the cocoa
industry in chaos in the world’s largest grower, as beans pile up in
farms or are smuggled out.

Alassane Ouattara,
who beat Gbagbo in a November 28 presidential poll, according to
U.N.-certified electoral commission results that Gbagbo refused to
concede, last week called for a one-month cocoa registration ban to
starve his rival of tax revenues.

Cocoa exporters, fearing sanctions by Western powers that recognise Ouattara’s win, have played ball.

In the western
region of Soubre, at the heart of the cocoa belt, farmers and one
cooperative manager said in interviews last week that buyers were not
taking their beans, and they feared the poorly dried beans stashed in
their warehouses would rot.

“Nothing’s moving, everything’s stopped,” said farmer, Innocent Zamble, who runs a farm in the Soubre town of Meagui.

“Our stores are
stuffed with beans and there’s no more space to stock them. We fear the
quality is going to perish because we don’t have the capacity to stock
big quantities long term.”

A first experience

Ouattara has not
said whether the ban will be extended when it expires on February 23.
Exporters estimate that around 65,000 tonnes arrived at Abidjan and San
Pedro ports in the two weeks to February 6, none of which has been
exported.

But even if it is
lifted, EU restrictions on ships registered there doing business with
the port, which the European Union says is supporting “Gbagbo’s illegal
regime”, will continue to interrupt export activities. And a shortage
of liquidity means there is not enough cash to pay suppliers on a
day-to-day basis, exporters say.

In the western
region of Gagnoa, farmers and cooperative managers said several growers
were switching to growing vegetables, tomatoes or maize, which can be
harvested faster for export or local trade.

“They’re not paying for the cocoa and farmers have to survive,” said cooperative manager, Francois Badiel.

“Lots of them are
now doing trunk farming (growing vegetables) instead. This is the first
time they’ve seen a situation like this,” Mr. Badiel said.

In the eastern
region of Abengourou, on the Ghana border, farmers said huge numbers of
cocoa trucks were crossing the border in smuggling operations.

“When we saw how
many trucks full of cocoa were heading over the border every day, we
said: ‘There’s not even that much cocoa in our region’,” said
Abengourou farmer, Joseph Amani.

“It must be coming in from other regions as well. It’s easy to get it here from Daloa or Soubre by road,” Mr. Amani added.

A purchasing
manager of an international cocoa exporter said that while major
international exporters have stopped purchases, some local exporters
were very active at the port, buying at about 900 CFA francs per
kilogramme.

Local exporters
have tended to support Gbagbo, while the big multinationals are bound
by their base countries in Europe or the United States to recognise
Ouattara’s authority.

“The small local
exporters are still very active in the past week. They are buying a lot
of cocoa, but I’m wondering where they are exporting it and on which
ships,” the manager said.

Reuters