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A bittersweet moment for the cocoa market
A partial view taken on November 23, 2011 in Paris shows chocolate and sweets displayed at the Mere de famille chocolate shop.
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Adriene Hill: Now to one of the sweetest news stories of the day -- or maybe bittersweet, or semi-sweet. Chocolate -- the price of cocoa has started to fall.
From London, Christopher Werth explains why.
Christopher Werth: Carsten Fritsch is a commodities analyst for Commerzbank. He watches the cocoa markets closely --- and he enjoys his work.
Carsten Fritsch: Yes, I like eating chocolate.
But lately, fewer chocolate lovers are buying sweets. And there's a very simple reason for that: demand for cocoa -- the main ingredient in chocolate -- has dropped across the world, as the global downturn drags on.
And Fritsch says, with less demand, the price of cocoa has plunged.
Fritsch: So that's a visible effect of the economic crisis on cocoa demand, but I think that the main driver is the supply situation.
That is, the supply of cocoa that's grown around the world. Growers had expected a surplus of cocoa this year. But dry, dusty winds out of the Sahara now threaten crops in West Africa, the world's largest region for production -- a scenario that could send cocoa prices right back up again, and keep chocolate lovers away too.
In London, I'm Christopher Werth for Marketplace.
Aren't you forgetting the very many of us who have decided to intentionally boycott most commercial chocolate due to the issues of child slavery in the production of cocoa? For the past few years, I have ONLY bought Free-Trade, Slavery-Free chocolate-- and I don't buy much, because it's a lot more expensive and I can't afford to buy very much. Which is probably just as well; my waistline is much happier with just a little.
