Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland • Hacker News Board

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#411

Post by inglor_cz » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 1:33 PM UTC

disabled wrote: post #394

killtimeatwork wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's where China was smart I guess. They didn't sign any treaty which forced them into free trade or IP protection, but instead slowly allowed their industries to build up via IP theft and strong protectionism. Now they have giant companies on par with the West's. Whereas everyone who joined the EU in the decade of 2000 (and the Washington Consensus before that in the nineties) is now a pawn of the Western capital…

> Whereas everyone who joined the EU in the decade of 2000 (and the Washington Consensus before that in the nineties) is now a pawn of the Western capital with no clear path of escaping the trap of mediocrity. Not true. I hope you are joking. Most countries that joined the EU in the 2000s and 2010s become pretty westernized within 5 years of joining. Have you ever spent significant time in these countries, pre-EU or…

Life in the Czech Republic is fine, as far as I am concerned. No violent places like Chiapas in Mexico.

What isn't fine is the worldwide trend toward morbid obesity and metabolic disease. Americans, as usual, are the trend setters, but we are following them. That is what reduces life expectancy and especially life quality in nations that can afford to gorge on 100 pounds of sugar per person and year.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

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Post by [deleted] » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 1:37 PM UTC

AdrianB1 wrote: post #228

oblio wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the book argues that when developing countries are pressured into free trade agreements This should have been obvious since the Opium Wars and the Opening of Japan (see Commodore Matthew Perry). All developed countries are pro free trade for markets where they are strong and fiercely protectionist where they are not (or they consider those markets strategic priorities). I'm from Romania. Romania joined the EU in…

In 2002-2005 I worked with all the supermarket and hypermarket chains in Romania, I still have a couple of friends in CxO positions in the top 5 companies; you are missing the full picture on what happened there, but the story is too long for a comment here; the 2007 change had zero impact of what already happened in the early 2000s.

[deleted]

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

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Post by lazylizard » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 1:46 PM UTC

i see maybe cocoa plantations up the hills of dak lak? chiang rai? in the coming years?

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

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Post by golergka » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 1:57 PM UTC

oblio wrote: post #27

m12k wrote: post #15

I'm reading the book The Divide at the moment. It makes the argument that it takes time and the right conditions to build up an industry - infrastructure needs to be built, education and a skilled labor pool with the necessary know-how as well. To begin with, a fledgling industry in a developing country cannot compete with those of already industrialized countries - these are already so effective that they can underc…

> So the book argues that when developing countries are pressured into free trade agreements This should have been obvious since the Opium Wars and the Opening of Japan (see Commodore Matthew Perry). All developed countries are pro free trade for markets where they are strong and fiercely protectionist where they are not (or they consider those markets strategic priorities). I'm from Romania. Romania joined the EU in…

> Do you know why I know them? Because there are 0 (zero!) local supermarket chains left. They've all been bought by foreign companies.

Is it a bad thing? I was under impression that these were exactly the kinds of businesses that operate better at larger scale.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

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Post by SyzygistSix » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

jopsen wrote: post #332

treis wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the counter argument. By protecting an inefficient sector you make it harder for every other sector to operate. If Ghana moves to protect their Chocolate manufacturing that will likely come at the expense of their Cocoa growers. The best way seems to start with low level work and move up the chain.

> that will likely come at the expense of their Cocoa growers. It'll be interesting to see. Making good chocolate certainly isn't easy. Nor is compliance with food quality standards.. But if they control enough of the chocolate production, I guess foreign manufacturers may choose to setup a processing factory in Ghana. Of course, it's not without risk. Foreign manufacturers could perhaps invest into farming equipment…

I think the quality of beans in Ghana is improving but they are still significantly behind Central and South America. As someone who worked making high quality chocolate in the US, people are less likely to invest in exploitative cacoa production just as much as low quality beans.

If you are buying an $9 chocolate bar, in addition to quality, consumers are also looking to support fair business models. So improving the labor conditions, something many European companies seem to show little interest in, is as much a part of finding better partners as increasing quality. And more and more, these issues are just as important as quantity.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

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Post by SyzygistSix » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 2:59 PM UTC

lr4444lr wrote: post #42

m12k wrote: post #15

I'm reading the book The Divide at the moment. It makes the argument that it takes time and the right conditions to build up an industry - infrastructure needs to be built, education and a skilled labor pool with the necessary know-how as well. To begin with, a fledgling industry in a developing country cannot compete with those of already industrialized countries - these are already so effective that they can underc…

Okay, but if local goods can't be produced at a price that is commensurately low, then the fledgingly country's wage earners have their purchasing power reduced, with less discretionary income to further their own educational and business pursuits. I think this thesis you are referring to takes for granted that the tariffs are going to be responsibly used by the governing class setting them to invest in the long term…

This isn't exactly the issue with the cacao production industry.

Like coffee, I believe the industries that are able to produce higher quality beans with more equitable and fair labor practices are doing better than the countries that continue producing cheap cacao. Something that I am under the impression is less supported by European chocolate producers.

My source is my time as a chocolate maker in the US.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

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Post by SyzygistSix » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 3:08 PM UTC

jariel wrote: post #24

m12k wrote: post #15

I'm reading the book The Divide at the moment. It makes the argument that it takes time and the right conditions to build up an industry - infrastructure needs to be built, education and a skilled labor pool with the necessary know-how as well. To begin with, a fledgling industry in a developing country cannot compete with those of already industrialized countries - these are already so effective that they can underc…

So Saudi Arabia, UAE, Canada and Saudi Arabia are 'stuck' selling natural resources? I think it's probably a much better plant to extract a good deal of wealth from the natural resource and invest it in other areas of higher value creation, even in the same vertical. There's a good chance that Ghana's policies are needlessly constrained. More obviously there are 100 things Ghana could do to improve living conditions…

>Ghana's exporters have just been banned from exporting. They are going to go out of business very soon.

This is just refusing to sell to Switzerland. High end chocolate companies are very interested in developing higher quality and more equitable cacao production in other countries, as there is a shortage of high quality cacao. I know the company I worked for has recently been buying cacao from Ghana, something that they did not previously do. Working with these kinds of producers is probably far more beneficial than continuing to work with companies mass producing chocolate.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

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Post by SyzygistSix » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 3:17 PM UTC

true_religion wrote: post #122

TeMPOraL wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other points are already addressed in different comments, but to address this one: > Ghana doesn't have all of the layers of industry necessary to support development and export of products i.e. there are no market buyers at any reasonable price. Per the article, they literally control half of the world's cocoa. This means they get to define what "a reasonable price" is, as long as the rest of the world wants to keep…

The last time Ghana blocked cocoa sales, the European powers responded by creating plantations in other countries to break Ghanas monopoly of the supply. Then they went a step further in researching and marketing low cocoa chocolate so their domestic population would be less reliant on cocoa. Agricultural luxury goods are one area where it’s hard to continually push a monopoly advantage. That said, I think that if Gh…

Like coffee, this seems to be the better business model. Higher quality rather than quantity. There is a great demand for high quality cacao and high end chocolate makers have been organizing for a while to develop quality cacao production in the producing companies. While it has largely been occurring in Central and South America, I have no doubt that people are looking to reproduce this success in Africa and elsewhere, which is good for both the workers and the chocolate makers. The sooner exploitative makers of low quality chocolate are pushed out of the industry, the better. Europe's reputation as a maker of high quality chocolate may still endure, but it is far less the case now. The state of the art has rapidly been eclipsed by smaller producers in the 21st century.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#419

Post by SyzygistSix » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 3:23 PM UTC

rory wrote: post #222

jariel wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Saudi Arabia, UAE, Canada and Saudi Arabia are 'stuck' selling natural resources? I think it's probably a much better plant to extract a good deal of wealth from the natural resource and invest it in other areas of higher value creation, even in the same vertical. There's a good chance that Ghana's policies are needlessly constrained. More obviously there are 100 things Ghana could do to improve living conditions…

Maybe the government is trying to pressure Swiss companies up the value chain to move processing operations to Ghana? That seems like a reasonable way to increase income to Ghanaians and build local human capital, without having to start industry from scratch. I don't know the fine details of how chocolate is made, but a chocolate bar seems like a fairly straightforward industrial product. Why should it be made in so…

>Ghana's exporters have just been banned from exporting. They are going to go out of business very soon.

I do. It isn't, necessarily. Quality is becoming much more important now and makers of high quality chocolate are growing in market share. Like coffee, there is more demand for higher quality and less exploitative business models.

There is a significant demand for high quality cacao such that producers of chocolate are helping to develop the cacao industry in producing countries to move to a higher quality,less exploitative model.

I don't know for certain, but Ghana, and other African countries, may be staking their future on this model, which has been successful in Central and South America, rather than continuing to use egregiously exploitative labor to produce low quality of cacao to sell large quantities to companies like Nestle. More and more, the money is elsewhere.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

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Post by kaliszad » Sat, Mar 20, 2021, 4:14 PM UTC

paganel wrote: post #303

oblio wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the book argues that when developing countries are pressured into free trade agreements This should have been obvious since the Opium Wars and the Opening of Japan (see Commodore Matthew Perry). All developed countries are pro free trade for markets where they are strong and fiercely protectionist where they are not (or they consider those markets strategic priorities). I'm from Romania. Romania joined the EU in…

Fellow Romanian here, a person very close to me died of heart-failure in the middle of the street in downtown Bucharest 10+ years ago, not a block away from her employer's HQs at the time. She was in her early 40s, her employer was BCR (the bank that had just been acquired by Erste), and said close person had had a few fights with the new Austrian rulers to be, she was part of the bank's trade-union body, she didn't…

My far relatives (but still the same last name) drilled oil in Romania before you could even call it really drilling, it was more like bucketing from what I was told. Maybe it was a bit exaggerated though the job was probably quite dangerous anyway as my relative almost burned to death. He was really lucky to survive with the burns he had - almost his whole skin was gone. The positive thing was, he grew a continuous layer of new skin and until his death looked very young.

It doesn't seem Romania is drilling much these days, more like refining imported crude oil before exporting the products. Judging from what was left of a different communist regime the last 30 years haven't been easy but most people seem to be much, much better off now than before the fall of the iron curtain probably also compared to the general QoL development in the world, I haven't looked up any statistics but it definitely seems like it. The quality standards now are much higher in every respect, the work in a factory is much safer for the workers. You are usually looking at many years of retirement even when you generally retire later where I hear stories about people from factories dying quite early probably because of the working conditions, many small injuries over the lifetime, fumes, dirt, smoking everywhere and all the time etc. If you get injured at work in Germany and haven't done anything against the protocols, it is a big problem for the company - you will be compensated usually very well for your trouble. Companies try to avoid injuries as well as they can in my experience on seeing the shop floors of a steel foundry, where safety really matters, else you are likely to get hurt fatally.

That said, no corporation is always doing the smart thing from the business or management perspective. There is usually internal politics, management strategies and more involved. There are also more and less competent people at every position. Maybe OMV should have kept some of the specialists and maybe educate them about the modern technology and methods. Generally the previous regimes were not very efficient with personnel and other resources so it is really hard to say what OMV should have really done.