Plant Cocoa Now!

West African Troubles Help Pacific Planters

SOUTH PACIFIC cocoa producers just now are enjoying high prices for their product and facts and figures quoted in a recent issue of Crown Colonist, in respect of the West African industry, indicate that the ball is vir tually at the feet of Islands planters if they plant up for the future now.

The biggest producer of cocoa is still British West Africa which reached peak production in 1936-37 with 400,000 tons.

Since then production had dwindled and for one reason —the alarming spread of a cocoa tree disease called Swollen Shoot disease.

It is estimated that in 1947, of the 400 million cocoa trees in the colony, 44 million were infected with this disease and that it was spreading at the rate of 15 million trees a year. The only cure so far known is to cut the tree out and this is being done to the extent of about four million trees per year. Mean while the disease has spread to Nigeria and the French Ivory Coast.

AT the rate trees are being infected in West Africa, with consequent loss of production, it is estimated that unless extensive planting is done in some other part of the Colonial Empire now, supplies of beans a few years hence will be totally inadequate to meet demand.

Inadequate cocoa-bean supply is some thing that goes beyond mere profit or loss for the planter. It is a matter of dollars for the United Kingdom which during 1948 exported £4,500,000 worth of manufactured confectionery to hard cur rency areas.

The cocoa industry in New Guinea was

in its infancy in 1939. The war in that area, of course, did all but annihilate it.

Since the war copra has been king, but some far-sighted planters in the New Britain area have been planting-up cocoa. The natural market for New Guinea cocoa beans is Australia and this seems to be a point at which growers in New Guinea and manufacturers in Australia could get together with mutual benefit. Most New Guinea cocoa received in Australia at present is used for blend ing with Accra beans.

IN November, 1947, representatives of the Australian confectionery industry met Mr. E. J. Ward and the then Minister for Trade and Customs with a view to having the cocoa industry boosted in New Guinea. Little of a practical nature ap pears to have followed from that meet ing, however.

Although in 1949 Western Samoan cocoa beans fell temporarily to £llO per ton (for reasons that have never been adequately explained) the market has now fully recovered and beans are bring ing £2OO per ton f.o.b. Apia. New Guinea and New Hebrides beans are quoted at over £220 in Sydney; accra at £A2B3 c.i.f.

Sydney.