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Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

face2faceafrica.com

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Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#421

Post by SyzygistSix »

osacial wrote: post #72
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…

That's a complete nonsense on how things work in reality. The biggest problem for Africa is that MARKET of anything that they are selling is in Europe and US. They can demand anything they want(which is simple racket and anyone despises these things in business), and it all will simply end with some startup in Cali who will start to grow cocoa beans in vertical farms or some other African country will become cocoa ex…

This doesn't really reflect the reality of the cacao market or the chocolate making industry, which is rapidly changing.

Countries like Ghana used to be held over a barrel regarding price. They produce low quality cacao usng extremely exploited labor to provide mass quantities to multinationals making low quality chocolate,like Nestle, Dove, Ghiardelli, etc.

Lately there is a lack of high quality, "fair trade" cacao for the growing high quality chocolate industry, which has taken to helping growers develop to be able to provide what they need. Not good news for the low quality producers, which, broadly speaking, are in Europe, which has been resting on its laurels and reputation while the state of the art has rapidly been improved by small, but growing companies. I don't know for certain but this may be part of the reason Ghana is refusing to sell to Switzerland. I do know that the company I worked for recently began buying cacao from Ghana. And that is certainly partly due to the quality increasing significantly.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#422

Post by SyzygistSix »

nerdponx wrote: post #77
osacial wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a complete nonsense on how things work in reality. The biggest problem for Africa is that MARKET of anything that they are selling is in Europe and US. They can demand anything they want(which is simple racket and anyone despises these things in business), and it all will simply end with some startup in Cali who will start to grow cocoa beans in vertical farms or some other African country will become cocoa ex…

Demanding a greater % of the final value of a good is a racket? And you really think that Ghana's cocoa superiority will be upended by some American startup? That's laughable, and certainly not enough of a credible threat to keep Ghana under the boot of economic imperialism.

Ghana has superiority regarding quantity, however historically the quality has been low. This is changing due to US startups cooperating with growers in Ghana and elsewhere to improve the quality, as well as use less exploitative labor, as there is a lack of quality fair trade cacao.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#423

Post by WalterBright »

oblio wrote: post #399
WalterBright wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I infer then you agree that free trade does not convert countries into colonies.

Free trade rarely is as free as in theory, was my point. Regarding US states, and though I absolutely abhor playing devil's advocate on this one, the Northern states did force the Southern ones to give up their economic model at gun point. Free trade, right? :-)

Still didn't turn them into colonies, despite free interstate trade.

Your thesis was free trade turns countries into colonies. It clearly doesn't. It's other things that turn countries into colonies.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#424

Post by nottrobin »

danielscrubs wrote: post #388
908B64B197 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (personal anecdote: a paper from Tsinghua or Shanghai Jiao Tong on average is as good as one from Berkeley, Stanford or MIT) Wait until Berkeley Stanford and MIT get better network security! [0][1][2] [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/31/us/chinese-scientist-canc... [1] https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-11/chinese-... [2] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/chinese-researcher-e...

Those links provided doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Berkeley, Stanford nor MIT?

Also, only one of them has anything to do with theft. The other two are simply unrelated news stories about people with links to China - one was a US researcher who may have lied to get a visa, the other simply a "policy breach".

To cite them here is firstly to lie, as they aren't relevant, but secondly to show some pretty xenophobic tendencies, equating any news story connected to anyone Chinese as being proof of some other anti-Chinese theory.

Pretty disgusting.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#425

Post by burntoutfire »

majgr wrote: post #374
leto_ii wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also a Romanian here. My take is similar to yours, but I would go even further in saying that the 90s were even more catastrophic in terms of privatization and liberalization. Remember the 'shock therapy' years? Prices doubling every few months? Entire industries collapsing, prized factories being sold for scrap metal? Millions losing their jobs etc. - a lot of that stuff didn't have to happen that way. A lot of it w…

In Poland some share similar sentiment, but it was better to get rid of of all these inflexible, low quality companies than providing them with life support. Problem was with management and technology. You would need to get rid of whole management hierarchy, and at that time there was nobody who could replace it. Some relicts from communism still lingers here and there, for 30 years after fall of communism unable to…

That's a story told by the neoliberals. Meanwhile, a some of the communist-era companies survived and are thriving: PKO BP, Orlen, LOTOS, KGHM, PGNiG etc. The post-communist management and culture didn't prevent them from transforming into basically modern companies that aren't different from their foreign competitors.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#426

Post by 908B64B197 »

nottrobin wrote: post #424
danielscrubs wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those links provided doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Berkeley, Stanford nor MIT?

Also, only one of them has anything to do with theft. The other two are simply unrelated news stories about people with links to China - one was a US researcher who may have lied to get a visa, the other simply a "policy breach". To cite them here is firstly to lie, as they aren't relevant, but secondly to show some pretty xenophobic tendencies, equating any news story connected to anyone Chinese as being proof of so…

The IP theft is indeed quite disgusting.

[0] https://blogs.cisco.com/news/huawei-and-ciscos-source-code-c...

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-01/did-china...

[2] https://globalnews.ca/news/7275588/inside-the-chinese-milita...

[3] https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-raytheon-engineer-sent...

[4] https://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/snowden-chinese-ha...

[5] https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/10/20689468/tesla-autopilot-...

[6] https://www.thedetroitbureau.com/2019/03/tesla-sues-former-e...

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#427

Post by devoutsalsa »

prepend wrote: post #55

I think it’s good to see raw producers start working up market to make their own chocolate. I think a Ghanaian chocolate brand actually owned by Ghanaians and made for export would market very well. It’s interesting to me how much tasty and interesting stuff in Africa has not been marketed internationally and there’s lots of room for them to grow and develop. For example, fonio [0], is a grain native to west Africa t…

Maybe Ghana will buy some Swiss companies.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#428

Post by disabled »

inglor_cz wrote: post #411
disabled wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Yeah, I agree. I did not mean for someone from Czechia to take it personally. I am sorry about that and I will do better and be more considerate.

I am a dual US| EU (Croatian) citizen, who is culturally American. I live in Croatia. So, I hope you understand where I am coming from, even though I was wrong.

I also have type 1 diabetes (autoimmune and insulin dependent) which is a “metabolic disease”. It is more appropriate to say “type 2 diabetes” or “diabetes type 2” or “insulin-resistance”, rather than a metabolic disease.

The issue with America is we have a lot of unnecessary death. It is not just obesity and type 2 diabetes, although that is a huge part of it. Our healthcare system is designed to create as much profit as possible, without having to improve the health of the people using it. We have no adequate public health infrastructure because of this huge profit seeking and we suffer because of a lack of regulation. This all causes unnecessary death.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#429

Post by fuzzfactor »

sokoloff wrote: post #99
austincheney wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt it. If anything it will restrict market availability which will only increase demand, but the best way to know is watch the price for beans.

I agree that watching the market is the best way to judge the balance. I'd expect the price for beans as-delivered to Switzerland is likely to go up. The price for beans as-offered in Ghana is likely to go down. The latter matters more to Ghana cocoa farmers.

The farmers who make more money from the slavery aspect rather than the cocoa itself will move on to other crops.

Re: Ghana will no longer sell cocoa to Switzerland

#430

Post by supuun »

justinclift wrote: post #375
klipklop wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. My 4 year old Oneplus phone taught me that China can make a phone just as good as anyone else. It's a quality product and was at a great price. With that said, my next phone will be an iPhone. I am trying to de-china whenever I can when it comes to buying stuff.

> With that said, my next phone will be an iPhone. I am trying to de-china whenever I can when it comes to buying stuff. Isn't Apple extremely well known for it's production lines being in China?

well, it's still better than buying stuff from Chinese company if you are trying to "de-chinaze". Also, I don't think you have any other option. ah, aren't samsung phones made in South Korea? so you do have alternatives.
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