Cocoa is trading at its highest levels in over 4 years, and this is being supported by the relative dryness in West African growing regions.  Numerous articles in trade wires are quoting meteorologists saying that it has been very hot and dry, and that is fueling this recent spike.  That is only half true.  Abidjan (CDI) has actually had cool temperatures relative to both last year and normal for much of December and January.  The dryness however, has been persistent; only 2 weeks in the last 12 saw Abidjan receive greater than 1″ of total weekly precipitation.  Going forward, the WTI outlook (click on above map) isn’t expecting any weekly rainfall to exceed 1″ until mid March, providing continued support for higher futures in the cocoa market. 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 30th, 2008 at 9:33 am and is filed under Agriculture, Global Commodities, Global Weather, Softs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.