With the world’s cocoa industry in crisis from failing production in West Africa, Brazilian farmer Moises Schmidt is hoping to revolutionize the production process with the world’s largest cocoa farm. - REUTERS
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00:00Brazilian farmer Moises Schmidt is developing the world's largest cocoa farm.
00:06He plans to revolutionize the way the main ingredient in chocolate is produced,
00:10growing high-yield cocoa trees fully irrigated and fertilized
00:14in an area bigger than the island of Manhattan.
00:17From watering to the application of fertilizer,
00:20the farm will be almost entirely mechanized,
00:22with the only exception being fruit picking from the trees, said Schmidt.
00:26The $300 million project comes as the global cocoa industry is facing a crisis.
00:33More than 60% of the world's cocoa is grown in Ivory Coast and Ghana.
00:37Production there is failing from a mix of plant disease, climate change and aging plantations.
00:43Prices nearly tripled in 2024,
00:47hitting a record high just under $13,000 a metric ton in December before retreating.
00:53For Schmidt and other farmers in Brazil,
00:56the crisis is viewed as an opportunity.
01:00It surprised us.
01:02We didn't expect this drop in production,
01:04this increase in demand to happen so quickly.
01:10But it is also worth highlighting
01:13an unmet demand that we had not seen in the world.
01:17If you look at the Americas today,
01:19there is a pent-up demand for this product.
01:20Schmidt's planned 24,000-acre farm is the largest and most innovative in the region,
01:29but not the only one.
01:31Other supersized projects are under development,
01:34as farming groups look to apply industrial-scale agriculture expertise to cocoa production.
01:39If those plans work out,
01:41the industry could shift from West Africa back to Brazil,
01:44where the cocoa tree is native.
01:46But some cocoa researchers are worried the mega-projects are based on thousands of clones of the same type of tree,
01:53and could become vulnerable to diseases.
01:56Brazil was once second in global cocoa production,
01:59but a devastating fungus in the 1980s decimated crops.
02:04Schmidt estimates as much as 1.2 million acres of high-yield cocoa farms
02:09could be in place in Brazil in a decade,
02:11which could produce as much as 1.6 million tons of cocoa.
02:16Currently, Brazil produces only 200,000 tons,
02:19while the world's top producer Ivory Coast harvests 10 times more.