Brasília – The ten leading cocoa producing countries in the world are attending a workshop in Brasília. Since yesterday (12), they are discussing international certification of the product’s crop. The setting of a quality standard is a requirement of the chocolate manufacturing countries, such as Switzerland, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States.
The international market is expecting that by the end of the 2010/2011 there will be rules regarding product quality (food security norms), environmental impact control and fair market guarantees. During the meetings, producers will start drafting a proposal of certification norms.
To Adonias de Casto Virgens Filho, the head of the Cocoa Research Centre (Cepec), an organization affiliated to the Ministry of Agriculture, the certification may benefit the industry and reward producers who succeed in supplying better quality cocoa. “To the producing countries, in case the certification leads to higher prices, things will become really interesting” says the economist Ricardo Tafani, of the Executive Commission for the Cocoa Farming Plan (Ceplac), also affiliated to the Ministry of Agriculture.
The setting of rules is of interest to Brazil, which wants to compete in the fine cocoa market. Presently, the country is the sixth leading producer in the world. Ever since the infestation with witches’ broom (Moniliophthora perniciosa) in the late 1980s, the country has had to import cocoa, and takes advantage of existing milling facilities to process the fruit and then export the product, in the form of liquor, butter, pie and powder.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, there are 60,000 cocoa growers in Brazil (in the states of Bahia, Espírito Santo, Amazonas, Pará, Rondônia and Mato Grosso). The industry employs 300,000 people in direct jobs and another 1 million in indirect ones. Tomorrow (14th) in Brasília, the minister of Agriculture, Mendes Ribeiro, will open the 74th General Assembly and the meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Alliance of Cocoa Producing Countries (Copal).
*Translated by Gabriel Pomerancblum
