Riachão das Neves, Brazil (Reuters) – In Bahia, farmer Moisés Schmidt is developing the largest cocoa farm in the world.
Its plan is to revolutionize the way the main ingredient of chocolate is produced, cultivating high -yielding and fertilized cacaueiros in an area larger than Manhattan Island, which is currently not known for the production of almonds.
The $ 300 million Schmidt plan is the largest and most innovative in the region, but not the only one. There are similar supervised projects under development, some of them almost so large, as well capitalized agricultural groups seek to apply the experience in agriculture on an industrial scale to cocoa production to profit from very high product prices.
If these plans work, the sector center of the sector may move from West Africa to Brazil.
“I believe Brazil will become an important region for cocoa in the world,” Schmidt told Reuters while walking in the midst of rows and more rows of new cocoaeiros in the Cerrado region.
He estimates that up to 500,000 hectares of high -performance cocoa farms could be implemented in Brazil in ten years, which would produce up to 1.6 million tons of cocoa.
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By comparison, Brazil currently produces only about 200,000 tons, while Ivory Coast, the largest producer, reaps ten times more than that. Ghana, the second largest global producer, produces about 700,000 tons of grain.
Currently, the global cocoa sector is in crisis. Production is failing on Ivory Coast and neighboring Ghana, which together cultivate more than 60% of the world’s cocoa. A powerful combination of plant disease, climate change and aged plantations has led to three consecutive years of drop in production.
This has been bad news for chocolate lovers. Cocoa prices almost tripled by 2024, reaching a record of $ 12,931 per tonne metric in December. Since then, the price has dropped to about $ 8,200, but is still well above historical averages.
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Opportunity in the crisis?
For Schmidt and other farmers in Brazil, the crisis is seen as an opportunity.
Family business Schmidt Agricultural began preparing to cultivate cocoa in 2019 after completing, with the help of an internal evaluation of the cocoa market, which would have a supply deficit in the future.
“We just didn’t imagine that it would happen anytime soon,” he said as he walked through the gaps of farm seedlings.
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Its planned 10,000 hectares farm would leave the properties of West Africa, which usually extend for a few dozen hectares. There are large farms in other producing countries, such as Ecuador and Indonesia, some of them with over 1,000 hectares, but still much smaller than the giant planned by Schmidt.
The plan is to apply large -scale farm agriculture techniques to the entire -irrigated cocoa farm, as if it were a field of soy or corn. The trees of the farm, in the municipality of Riachão das Neves, in western Bahia, will be grouped, leaving only enough space between them for mechanized irrigation and the application of fertilizers and pesticides.
Schmidt is planting 1,600 trees per hectare in the new areas compared to only 300 trees on conventional farms. Concentration should mean much higher yield per hectare.
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“The only thing that is not yet mechanized is the harvest of tree fruits,” said the farmer.
Some see this method of cultivation as a watershed.
“In five years, everything we knew about cocoa production will have changed,” said Tales Rocha, a cocoa agronomist at TRF Consultoria Agrícola, a company that consults farmers in Brazil.
Rocha said the Cerrado region in western Bahia has the ideal topography for large -scale agriculture, with its extensive flat areas.
Agricultural groups such as Schmidt Agricultural already produce soy, corn, cotton and fruits in thousands of hectares in western Bahia, a region with a large water supply.
Million seedlings
In the new farms, the cocoae are grown in the open, with lots of sunlight. This contrasts with traditional cocoa plantations in other parts of Brazil and the world, where cocoae divide space with other types of trees and receive some shadow.
Schmidt is developing high performance trees through a seedling operation that he has managed since 2019. His team has produced new cocoa varieties through the so -called positive selection, a project of years in which seedlings are multiplied from material from plants that produced the largest fruit load in test fields.
High performance trees planted at about 400 hectares in the first phase of the project are producing about 3,000 pounds per hectare (kg/ha), or ten times the average productivity of traditional cocoa areas in Brazil. Schmidt said his goal is to exceed 4,000 kg/ha. This would be eight times the average yield of 500 kg/ha of the largest producer, the ivory coast.
Very high productions, above 2,000 kg/ha, were achieved in small test fields administered by the Cacaueira Chop Plan Executive Committee (CEPLAC), the Cocoa do Brasil Research Agency, using high plant density.
The researchers, however, said that the results would need to be confirmed with the larger scale planting and added that there were doubts about the economic viability of this practice, which would require extensive care with culture and labor.
The installation of the Schmidt nursery, which operates as a separate company called Biobrasil, uses the propagation machinery of the Danish Forest Equipment manufacturer Ellepot, capable of producing 10 million seedlings per year. It produces trees to the planned giant farm and also sells seedlings to other cocoa projects in Brazil.
Some people on the market, however, are not so sure that this type of expansion will actually occur in Brazil.
“As always, the price is the main determining factor. Around $ 4,000 per ton, Brazil is barely interested,” said Pam Thornton, veteran cocoa consultant and grain merchant.
“After talking to many Brazilian farmers and visiting several major commercial farms, I believe world prices need to demonstrate that they will remain close to current levels for another year or more so that they expand the cultivated area and probably several thousand more dollars so that this happens significantly,” she said.
Schmidt says the cocoa of his operation would be profitable even about $ 4,000 per ton. “Over $ 6,000, it’s very lucrative, much better than soy or corn,” he said.
Long -term supply and demand projections seem positive for prices, considering that production in West Africa is stable or “trapped in a long cycle of decreasing results,” said Veteran Broker and US Cocoa Analyst Marcelo Dorea, CEO of M3i Capital Management.
“The market should, therefore, look for alternative sources of significant production,” he said, adding that Brazil seems to be a natural option, considering cocoa know-how and land availability.
“Big Cocoa” with an eye
Schmidt Agricultural cultivates more than 35,000 hectares with soy, corn and cotton in Bahia. She has preliminary agreements through understanding memorandos with chocolate producers and cocoa traders, said Schmidt.
Cargill, one of the largest commodity traders and food processors in the world, is already a partner in the early stages, which covers the 400 hectares, and is in negotiations to expand the partnership.
Schmidt said that almost every major cocoa traders or chocolate companies are talking to him and other farmers in Brazil about expansion and supply agreements.
Partnerships would include investments to develop projects and, in return, investors would guarantee the supply of cocoa, he said.
“We are working on contracts now,” he said, refusing to name companies, citing non-disclosure clauses.
Barry Callebaut, the world’s largest supplier of cocoa and chocolate products, is in negotiations to partner with the Santa Colomba farm group in an investment to form a 5,000 to 7,000 hectares farm in the municipality of Cocos, in western Bahia, two sources familiar with the negotiation told Reuters.
Santa Colomba declined to comment.
Barry Callebaut confirmed that it has signed a partnership with a farmers group in Brazil for a 5,000 -hectares cocoa farm in Bahia, but declined to mention the group’s name. The deal is part of Future Farming Initiative, a program launched by the company to boost high -tech cocoa agriculture and diversify its geographical presence.
“We are doing good progress with the FFI and we continue to see the interest of partners, customers and investors around the world,” he said.
Mars, American Snickers and M&MS bar producer, set up a cocoa testing field not far from Schmidt’s farm in Riachão das Neves.
The company said its test field is part of its efforts to deal with climate change and the fall of cocoa productivity worldwide.
“Bahia is attractive due to flat topography, fertile soils, reliable availability of water and established agronomic infrastructure,” said Luciel Fernandes, manager of the Cocoa da Mars Science Center in Brazil.
Potential risks
One of the main cocoa researchers in Brazil, however, is concerned.
Phytopathologist Karina Peres Gramacho, who works for Cepplac, believes there are risks for the plans for extensive cocoa plantations in western Bahia.
The fact that each of these megaprojects is based on thousands of clones of the same type of tree could leave future fields vulnerable to disease, which are very common in cocoa cultivation.
Brazil was once the second largest cocoa producer, behind only the Ivory Coast, but a devastating fungus in the 1980s, known as a witch broom, decimated thousands of hectares of cocoa plantations.
Gramacho supports the idea of using more developed and appropriate varieties to the region, usually hybrids that combine qualities of more than one genotype.
Some sector analysts also have doubts about the quality of cocoa that would be cultivated under the direct light of the sun, as the fruits produced in the shadow are usually considered a superior flavor.
Cristiano Villela Dias, scientific director of the Cocoa Innovation Center (CIC), says that some initial tests with the fruits produced in western Bahia did not indicate any noticeable difference in taste.
“The quality of almonds is very similar to the best cocoa produced in Brazil or other countries,” said Villela, adding that the ideal postharvest treatment, especially with fermentation and drying, would make a greater difference in almond quality.
Mars said it tested the cocoa produced in the area and did not identify “a fundamental difference in the taste or quality that is directly and exclusively associated with cultivation in full sun.”
