Cocoa farmers stockpile beans as export ban threatens mid-year crop

Cocoa prices at the farm gate in Ivory Coast are falling sharply and farmers are fast running out of money, with potentially damaging consequences for the cocoa mid-crop, according to farmers. Farmers said yesterday that they were stocking their cocoa beans in the hope they could preserve them long enough to sell when the political crisis was over, but that there was little enthusiasm for tending http://bit.ly/hZGtfI