Cocoa Market Prospects

LONDON. March 28.

In spite of cocoa buyers’ discontent with the prices they pay, the quotes for cocoa continue to rise.

The costs of production, however, do appear too high. No doubt the high prices obtained for years have made the planters careless in the cost of curing.

Even with the bigger pay provided for the workers, costs appear out of reason; and. unless they can cut their cloth according to their income, they are in for some shocks, as the buyers sooner or later will force lower prices.

Now that the Samoans have control of all cocoa production, I think they should have three or four central curing depots.

They should arrange a series of ferment ing boxes, to take wet beans from A on Monday, B on Tuesday, and so on. If they worked on a co-operative basis, all wet beans could be put together—after weighing and agreeing on a basis of per centage of shrinkage—and then they could sell the lot as Samoan No. 1, or No. 2 las the case may be). The manufacturers then would get a fairly large tonnage of equitable merchandise, and the proceeds of each lot would be divided in proportion to the agreed percentage of shrinkage.