Brazil: Cocoa supply crisis turns into an opportunity for Western Bahia

With West African cocoa production falling due to bad weather, aging trees and pests, rural producers in western Bahia saw an opportunity. The hot, dry region, famous for families who built fortunes exporting cotton and soybeans, are now growing cocoa for the first time. The trees are still young, and most of them have at least a year left to produce fruit, but the potential for gains is great. This has attracted independent producers and agribusiness giants. Cargill partnered with Schmidt Agrícola to plant 400 hectares of cocoa one hour from the city of Barreiras. Swiss chocolate company Barry Callebaut plans a high-tech partnership to develop around 5,000 hectares of cocoa plantations in the state. Families that already grow fruit or commodities in the region are also adding rows of cocoa trees, hoping to regain a global market in which producers in the south of the state, on the outskirts of Ilhéus and Itabuna, already had an enormous weight. If production in western Bahia ...