There is high demand for the Trinitario, the variety of cocoa grown in T&T, but local farmers are largely unable to respond with supply.
At last week’s Great British Food and Drink, hosted by British High Commissioner Harriet Cross at her residence in Maraval, the diplomat noted that the Trinitario is highly sought in the culinary scene of the UK and could be one industry where T&T could find increased export potential.
“In terms of Trinidad and Tobago products in the UK, I think chocolate is one good example of a really unique and very high-quality product that you have got in Trinitario-based chocolate. I know that chefs in some of the high-class establishments in the UK are very keen to get their hands on it,” said the British High Commissioner at the event.
However local farmers are struggling to even keep up with their traditional demand, far less increased demand from international markets.
A farmer connected to Montserrat Cocoa Farmers Co-Op Society Ltd explained that while farmers have been eager to capitalise on the increase in prices globally, climate change has hurt production. Since 2022, there has been a significant drop in cocoa crops and the farmers believe this shortage is worldwide and has contributed to the spike in prices across the world.
President of the Montserrat Cocoa Farmers Co-Op Society, Christopher Paul said the waning interest in the industry in the past few decades has also contributed to the shortages. He confirmed that local farmers are receiving orders for tonnes of cocoa but are unable to meet the demand.
“They could barely get one tonne. The demand is there, but sad to say they don’t have,” said Paul, “because of global warming and you also have a lot of abandoned estates.”
Paul however is hopeful that with the rise in prices, there can be a resurgence in the industry.
“Yes, the industry is in a position to capitalise because of the prices right now. The prices right now is what you would call abnormally high. We don’t expect that it would last but if you have cocoa at this point in time you have the opportunity to take advantage of the increase in prices. Unfortunately, though, Trinidad’s cocoa industry is not in a good place for a number of reasons,” said Paul, who urged the authorities or even the private sector to look into the potential returns that could be found in the industry.
“Production in the cocoa industry has been in steady decline. Maybe it wasn’t lucrative enough for people to invest in it. We understand that there are a lot of abandoned cocoa estates. If some mechanism can be done to bring those back into active production, then we would be in a position to take advantage of the high prices,” said Paul.
“Global warming also impacted production in the industry, so you have some challenges there as well with the little that we have. But with the prices now if it holds, I guess it would incentivize people who have abandoned estates and even some of the government’s state lands. It would be worth the while to bring those back into production so that we could take advantage of the high prices that we know about on the global market. “
Founder of the Alliance of Rural Communities (ARC) of Trinidad and Tobago, Gillian Goddard, shared a different perspective on the situation. She agreed that the price hike globally augured well for the local cocoa, especially since Trinidadian cocoa was already high-end on the international market.
“Yes, I think we are because now it means that cocoa that hasn’t had the same attention paid to the fermentation and drying process is now at the same price as our cocoa. So it means that the finished goods from it, we have higher quality finished goods for the same price. Whereas the prices for those things used to be much lower. Now obviously, they’re going to have to raise the prices of corporate chocolates to the same prices as what we produce which is usually considered craft or small-batch chocolates. So it means that we will have more of a competitive price for a higher quality product,” said Goddard who is also the convenor of the Cross Atlantic Chocolate Collective.
She however was not in full agreement that production levels were down, as she stated the production within her group had returned to normal levels after severe shortages seen two years ago. However, she was not certain farmers would see increased returns as a result of the increased prices.
“We had two years of very low production and this year, across our networks, the ARC networks our production is back to normal. And we keep data on everything. So that has not been our experience. Some other people have that experience because they have different labour concerns, our harvesting and so on is incorporated in our design,” said Goddard.
“Our model is just different because we are harvesting and doing production. So we don’t have the same labour issues as people who have separated farming from the production. So we are not experiencing that this year is a drop. Last year and the year before I would say we were down to 25 per cent of normal numbers.”
As a result of the previous shortage, Goddard said she was not sure farmers were benefitting from the price fluctuations in a significant way.
“I don’t think that the prices have surged. The prices surged two years ago. We had already surged because of the drop in production. So even though the price had gone up dramatically. The drop in production means that farmers were actually making the same amount of money. I’m not so sure. I don’t have enough data to comment on that in general,” she said.
Paul said the current situation should be a wake-up call for government and agriculture stakeholders as the country could be missing out on a significant revenue due to inaction. He called on those officials to provide incentives to encourage swift mobilisation within the sector.
“I’m saying this is an eye opener. For the government, the Cocoa Development Company, Ministry of Agriculture to pay more interest to the industry and to help incentivize the farmers though, to go into the crop. T&T has always had that good reputation for some of the best cocoa in the world. Unfortunately, we don’t have any set of cocoa to take advantage of the prices on the market.
“Those who have contracts when those contracts finish, then they would be able to negotiate much better prices, and that should drive the market to increase the production and face the challenges of the climate change,” said Paul. “Because if you have more lands under production, therefore you will have more cocoa so you’ll be able to take advantage, so I guess this might be a wake-up call to drive people back to the industry and get the different incentives to take advantage of it.”
However, he lamented that as it stood, there was not enough cocoa available for there to be significant improvement in the returns of farmers currently.