Cocoa market turmoil raises profile of old-school pod counters

Count data key in estimating global supplies and spotting disease outbreaks

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Across West Africa's cocoa heartland, Eddie Arthur has spent a quarter of a century travelling from farm to farm each day to stare at trees and count how many pods they have.

At every stop, he records the tally from a handful of trees, monitors flowers that can eventually grow into rugby ball-sized pods and tracks how dry or wet the ground is. Regardless of the weather or road conditions, the process is repeated at about 20 farms a day to gather data that helps predict the overall harvest size.

The job has hardly changed for decades. But the service that pod counters like Arthur at Forestero provide has become more important than ever as traders, hedge funds and chocolatiers try to gauge production in a market that has been rattled by an unprecedented shortage.