Nothing is going well in the land of chocolate, while the fair of the same name opens Thursday, October 28 in Paris. In Switzerland, the consumption of tablets and other sweets is rapidly disappearing since the Covid-19 crisis and the decline in social relations. Collateral effect: in Côte d’Ivoire, where half of cocoa farmers live below the poverty line, the price paid to farmers has fallen further.
The Swiss consume and export less chocolate since the Covid-19 crisis
The Swiss have officially lost their title as the world’s biggest consumers of chocolate. There, the collapse of the chocolate market is one of the many side effects of the pandemic. Indeed, if the Swiss ate 9.9 kilos of chocolate per person in 2020 (a Frenchman consumes about seven kilos instead), this is the first time in 40 years that our neighbors have fallen below the annual 10 kilos mark. The pandemic has passed by: the opportunities to offer chocolates when we are invited to friends or family are limited, not to mention the heatwave effect of summer 2020, which mechanically reduced sales in the sector. The biggest damage is, however, to be blamed on the closing of the borders, because if the Swiss buy a lot of chocolate, they are normally well helped by foreign tourists. This explains why production fell by 11.5% and exports by 13%.
The pandemic has also certainly been an accelerator in the change in consumer behavior, who now favor quality rather than quantity. It is for this reason that some artisan chocolatiers in Geneva have managed to make excellent sales during the pandemic. The world number one in cocoa, the Swiss Barry Callebaut, has also just launched its first marketed healthy drink with chocolate. The trend is also towards responsible consumption too: the big names in Swiss chocolate such as Nestlé, Lindt, Villars or Frey have launched a platform in this direction. The goal is to reach 80% of cocoa processed in Switzerland from sustainable agriculture. One fact remains: despite their commitments, manufacturers have failed to reduce deforestation in cocoa-producing countries and child labor. It would have increased by 20% in cocoa plantations during the pandemic.
In Côte d’Ivoire, producers caught by the throat
In Côte d’Ivoire, the price paid to farmers has fallen further. It has been the same problem for years: producing countries are poor countries and they are no match for multinationals. Compared to last year, the price per kilo has fallen by 17.5%, from 1.52 euros to 1.25 euros. This is a significant loss for the growers, half of whom live below the poverty line with around one euro per day. In Côte d’Ivoire, cocoa supports five to six million people, or one fifth of the population.
With such a large number of producers, Côte d’Ivoire nevertheless has the means to put pressure on international buyers: this is what it managed to do last year by negotiating this exceptionally high price per kilo of cocoa. at 1.52 euros. The Ivory Coast and Ghana, which are the two main producers of cocoa in the world, had made bend the multinationals by imposing on them a special premium of 400 dollars per tonne. An agreement reached just before the presidential elections in the two countries. The agreement has since fizzled out: the large groups began to circumvent this device and drew on their stocks and by buying cocoa from other producing countries, so much so that after six months, the Côte d ‘ Ivoire lowered the price paid to planters. So back to square one: farmers still only get 6% of the price of a chocolate bar.
The problem with Côte d’Ivoire is that it remains too dependent on exports. The country produced two million tonnes of cocoa last year, but only a quarter of the production is processed locally. It is for this reason that the government wants to switch to 100% local processing within four years, even if this objective seems difficult to achieve. Another avenue would be to increase the number of fair trade cocoa plantations, but there are very few in Côte d’Ivoire. However, they offer a better standard of living for planters and also outlaw child labor and deforestation.