Current Events

The conduct of the Iraqi regime is a threat to the authority of the United Nations, and a threat to peace. Iraq has answered a decade of U.N. demands with a decade of defiance. All the world now faces a test, and the United Nations a difficult and defining moment. Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence? Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant? ... The United States has no quarrel with the Iraqi people; they've suffered too long in silent captivity. Liberty for the Iraqi people is a great moral cause, and a great strategic goal. The people of Iraq deserve it; the security of all nations requires it. Free societies do not intimidate through cruelty and conquest, and open societies do not threaten the world with mass murder.

The White House has produced a 20-page dossier enumerating Saddam Hussein's violations of U.N. resolutions (PDF file). The indictment of the Iraqi regime isn't limited to weapons of mass murder. 

Cocoa bean prices have increased steadily over the past two years due to deficits in the supply/demand balance on world markets, but speculative buying has sent them shooting up in recent months. Earlier this week cocoa bean prices on London markets surged to fresh 15-year peaks, up nearly 50 percent since the start of the year. On Thursday afternoon, most active second-month futures were trading at around 1,430 pounds ($2,223) per ton, up from 978 at the start of the year and a low of 547 pounds in December 1999. [Yahoo/Reuters story, with no explanation on the evolution of cocoa supply and demand over the past few years — they don't seem to understand that price is a signal, so they don't focus on the causes of such signal.]

What the story doesn't tell you but should: cocoa production has quadrupled over the past 50 years; prices ranged between $400 and $1000 per metric ton from 1949 to 1972, then between $1200 and $2400 per ton from 1972 to 1997 (omitting a $4000 spike in 1975/76). The December 1999 price was very low compared to the last 30 years, which is a signal to producers/farmers that they should stop investing in cacao fields (due to lower profits); note that the cacao tree yields its first crop at 3-4 years old and reaches maturity at 10, so there is a fairly long time lag in the adjustment of supply to price signals. Finally, the current price is simply in the upper range of the last 30 years. No reason to panic... [data source: Global Cocoa Bean Supply/Demand and Apparent Stock Change, USDA Foreign Agricultural Service]

Hershey's annual report, 1999, Assuring An Adequate Cocoa Supply: The 20th century has witnessed sustained growth in demand for cocoa, growth which has been the result of the world's growing appetite for chocolate. Unfortunately, there have been years when cocoa production did not keep pace with the fairly steady upward trend in demand during this period. Supply shortfalls have resulted in periods of higher cocoa prices which, in turn, stimulated increased plantings, growing production and, once again, falling prices. The impact of these swings in cocoa costs has been significant, both for manufacturers and producers. Producers especially have struggled. High prices in the late 1970s and early 1980s stimulated a significant expansion in plantings in Africa, Latin America and Asia. Yet subsequent price declines limited the ability of these farmers to effectively care for the cocoa trees and still make a living. The result has been the widespread loss of whole cocoa-planting regions to low prices, pests and disease. Today, principally as a result of these price and production cycles, only three countries - Ivory Coast, Ghana and Indonesia - account for the lion's share of world cocoa supplies.

The cacao tree, theobroma cacao: The cacao tree produces flowers and fruit year-round. The cacao tree is small and comes from the forests of Central and South America. It needs a warm and humid climate, regular rainfall as well as a fertile and well-irrigated soil. It grows in the shade, preferably at an altitude of 1,300 to 2,300 feet, in the tropics 20° above and below the equator. The cacao tree yields its first crop at 3-4 years old. It is an adult plant at 10. It produces from 300 to 1,000 pounds of cocoa per acre for about 50 years.