out civil war in Ivory Coast would probably paralyse exports of the bulk of the main cocoa crop in the world's largest producer, unlike the 2002-2003 war when supplies reached the world market. Cocoa futures prices on the ICE exchange have already exceeded highs in the last civil war, reaching $3,775 per ton on March 4, as fighting between supporters of two rival governments has intensified fears over the future of supplies. The main harvest starting in October could suffer as violence forces workers, many of them impoverished migrants, to abandon farms and flee the country due to fears for their safety, analysts said. Jonathan Parkman, joint head of agriculture at Marex Financial Ltd in London, said that in the longer term, civil war would harm investment prospects for the cocoa industry in Ivory Coast, which accounts for about 40 percent of global supplies. “Everybody would be reconsidering whatever investment plans they already had on the table. At best they would be shelved, if not ripped up,” he said. In the short term the risk is that around 475,000 tons of beans now sitting in Ivorian warehouses — more than 10 percent of cocoa forecast to reach global markets this year —could rot. Cocoa is normally held at port for no longer than 10 days before being loaded on a ship, but some sacks have now been kept on the quayside for more than a month-and-a-half. “Even without war, cocoa is rotting in the warehouses ... which are not well adapted for long-term storage. So imagine if there were war,” said another industry source. A third source said, “Every morning we open the warehouse doors to keep the cocoa aired out, but if there is war, who will come and do this? The cocoa will stay in the warehouse and rot.”
