KOCHI: K J Varghese, a cocoa farmer at Manimala in Kottayam, has never seen such good times for the crop in the past four decades. The cocoa prices (dry beans), around Rs 180/kg less than three years back, have shot up to Rs 325/kg now, the highest in 44 years.
“The times are so good that more and more farmers have been entering cocoa farming over the past two-three years,” says Varghese, who is also into the distribution of cocoa saplings.
Through the Cocoa Producers Cooperative Society, of which he is the president, Varghese recently distributed saplings to over 1,000 farmers, who may slowly be switching from rubber where the prices have been subdued for the past several years. “We procure cocoa wet beans from our farmers and also from places like Karnataka, and process and distribute them to chocolate makers,” he says.
Wet beans, the price having increased from Rs 0-65/kg, is now going at Rs 85-90/kg. The reason for the sudden spike in cocoa prices is the disruption in production in Ivory Coast and Ghana, the two largest producers of cocoa, which account for more than 50% of the world’s cocoa.
However, experts anticipate the price to remain firm because of rising domestic demand for the agri-commodity as more and more local players enter the chocolate business, and the increasing use of cocoa in cosmetics and the pharma industry.
“Cocoa butter melts at body temperature, which makes it highly demanded in the cosmetic industry. Further, the pharma industry is also finding cocoa as a good input for pain balm and other similar products,” says B Suma, head of Cocoa Research Centre, Kerala Agriculture University.
While farmers under the Cocoa Producers Cooperative Society are involved in chocolate making, the recent years have also seen many other local players entering chocolate making to cater to the domestic and international markets. “We are also seeing a large number of small-scale players coming to us for technical know-how in chocolate making,” Suma said.
Pristine Chocolates, based out of Moozhikulam village near Aluva, is one such player.
“We are one of the companies which makes dark chocolates with 70-85% cocoa content in Kerala. While we have our own cocoa farm (nearly three acres), we also buy cocoa from farmers in other places, such as Idukki,” says Bobby John, a co-founder of Pristine Chocolates.
According to him, there are many markets abroad that prefer dark chocolates. Varghese’s Cocoa Producers Society has a tie-up with a foreign company to sell the natural cup from the cocoa shell, which is used as an ice-cream cup. Despite being a distant third in India in terms of the area under cultivation, Kerala is the second biggest producer of cocoa, thanks to a higher productivity per hectare.
The area under cocoa cultivation in the state has increased by 1,334 hectares (about 3,297 acres) since 2018-19, with 18,233 hectares (45,055 acres) under cultivation in 2022-23.
In the four years, cocoa production has increased by 2,028 tonnes, to 10,535 tonnes, for an increase of about 24%. Andhra Pradesh is the biggest cocoa producer in India, at 12,135 tonnes.
While the productivity in Kerala is 1,100 kg/hectare, Tamil Nadu, which cultivates cocoa on 32,580 hectares (about 80,500 acres), has a much lower productivity of 350/hectare.
According to Suma, farmers in Andhra’s West Godavari are entering cocoa farming in a big way, some farming 100 to 200 acres.