Brazil's would-be cocoa king aims to revolutionise industry

By comparison, Brazil currently produces only around 200,000 tons, while the world's top grower Ivory Coast harvests 10 times more than that. Ghana, the second largest global grower, produces around 700,000 tons of the beans. Currently, the global cocoa industry is in crisis

- Marcelo Teixeira, Reuters

In the Brazilian state of Bahia, farmer Moises Schmidt is developing the world's largest cocoa farm. His plan is to revolutionize the way the main ingredient in chocolate is produced, growing high-yield cocoa trees, fully irrigated and fertilized, in an area bigger than the island of Manhattan that is not currently known for producing the beans. Schmidt's $300 million plan is the largest and the most innovative in that region, but not the only one. There are similar super-sized projects under development, some of them nearly as big, as well-capitalized farming groups look to apply industrial-scale agriculture expertise to cocoa production to profit from sky-high prices for the beans.

If those plans work, the industry's centre of gravity could shift back to Brazil, where the cocoa tree is native, from West Africa. "I believe Brazil will become the world's cocoa breadbasket," Schmidt told Reuters while walking amid row after row of young cocoa trees stretching to the distance in this flat savanna land in the country's Centre-North region. He estimates that as much as 500,000 hectares (1.236 million acres) of high-yield cocoa farms could be in place in Brazil in 10 years, which would produce as much as 1.6 million tons of cocoa.

By comparison, Brazil currently produces only around 200,000 tons, while the world's top grower Ivory Coast harvests 10 times more than that. Ghana, the second largest global grower, produces around 700,000 tons of the beans.

Currently, the global cocoa industry is in crisis. Production is failing in Ivory Coast and neighboring Ghana, which between them grow more than 60% of the world's cocoa. A potent mix of plant disease, climate change and aging plantations has led to three consecutive years of falling output.