A dramatic spike in the price of cocoa that roiled commodity traders and candy makers is showing signs of easing, and the top industry group is even predicting a small global surplus, after years of shortages.
Chocolate lovers around the world would be forgiven for breathing a tentative sigh of relief. But on the ground in West Africa, among the thousands of smallholder farmers who supply about two-thirds of the world’s cocoa, the reality is far more complicated.
A drive of some 2,500 kilometers last month through key growing areas in Ivory Coast and Ghana revealed visibly dry farms with flowers withering on trees, cropland pocked with illegal mines and producers losing a battle with disease-riddled cocoa plants — all signs the road to recovery will be a tough one.
Africa’s cocoa heartland, which also includes nations like Nigeria and Cameroon, has long grappled with blight and aging trees, leaving farms particularly vulnerable as servere hammered crops in recent years. While international prices spiked as much as fivefold since the end of 2022, the distinct way the top producers sell and price their cocoa mean neither authorities nor farmers have reaped the kinds of windfalls necessary to meaningfully bolster harvests.
West Africa’s crops will be crucial in determining whether global cocoa prices return to more affordable levels. Overall, the harvests in the current growing year are expected to rise slightly, but remain well below output just a few years ago. Instead, the market is being balanced out as consumers respond by simply eating less chocolate.
"We may get a recovery in production next season,” said Jonathan Parkman, head of agricultural sales at Marex Group. "But it’s not going to be to the sort of levels that we saw prior to the big problems.”
Fields in Ghana marked the first stop. After winding 500 kilometers from the capital into the bush, the fallout from one of the country’s biggest cocoa challenges — swollen shoot disease — was clear in Enchi. As of 2023, the disease was rampant in the nation with vast tracts of farmland infected, especially in the main cocoa hub in the Western region, a regulator survey showed. Spread by small insects, it mottles leaves and shrinks pods, curbing yields and killing trees. Cocoa plants can appear healthy until the disease has progressed, making it difficult to spot infected fields early.
Oscar Bendeh stood among waist-high weeds and withered cocoa trees in his plot, which he said agronomists had previously touted as one of the best-yielding in the district. He was forced to abandon the farm about a year ago, after losing the battle against swollen shoot disease. He’s still holding out hope the cocoa regulator will help with replanting, like it’s done for some other local farmers.
"It was difficult to watch the disease take over,” Bendeh said. "In two years, everything had changed and I wasn’t collecting much.”
Ghana’s output this season will be more than 40% below its peak four seasons ago, according to International Cocoa Organization forecasts. Chopping down infected trees is ultimately the only way to curb the spread, which means the disease will continue to hang over harvests in the near-term.
To help turn things around, Ghana intends to replant about 500,000 hectares of cocoa land, or more than a third of the area, according to the regulator. A short distance from Bendeh’s wilting patch, one farmer had already benefited. Augustine Benneh’s 2.5-hectare farm was replanted under a rehabilitation program a few years ago, and lush green trees are now heavy with pods.
Still, about a tenth of the total target has been replanted so far, and Randy Abbey, the newly instated chief executive officer of the Ghana Cocoa Board, said the government needs $1.2 billion to work on the remaining area in the next three to four years. A large debt pile is complicating efforts to raise the funds, and the spending needs to be carefully spaced out, he said.
"It costs a lot of money, and especially at this time when we are not good financially, we need to also try and see how we can structure this in such a way we can do something per year,” Abbey said in an interview.
New York cocoa futures have soared in the past two years, nearly tripling in that span, as disease and weather constrained output. Even after easing recently, contracts through 2026 are trading above $6,000 a ton, after decades of trading around half that level. However, governments in Ivory Coast and Ghana typically sell most of their crop in advance of the harvest. That’s left them unable to fully take advantage of the global rally and dealing with the fallout at times when sales ultimately exceed supply.
"Ivory Coast and Ghana haven’t secured the best prices for their cocoa over the last few years,” said Marex’s Parkman. "That means there’s less money in the system to address the very real disease problems and other issues that they’ve had.” Growers in the two nations also earn a government-set price — a system originally set up to buffer farmers during stretches of low international prices, but which is leaving their earnings well shy now.
"Ivory Coast can’t change its marketing system from one day to the next depending on the market,” said Arsene Dadie, director of domestic marketing at its regulator, Le Conseil du Cafe-Cacao. "The country has to manage a large volume of the world harvest, and we are not going to follow the market blindly.”
That’s left some searching for income elsewhere, and Ghana’s gold-rich Tarkwa belt showed an illicit mining rush at play. Cocoa farmers there have been lured into selling farms to artisanal miners searching for the yellow metal, with prices at a record. The sites are encroaching on agricultural land and forest reserves, as well as polluting rivers. Even if crop prices eventually outpace gold, the land is degraded and full of deep holes, making it difficult to revert back to agriculture.
After a short flight to top producer Ivory Coast, another legacy of low farmer profits was exposed. Many growers haven’t made investments in technology like irrigation to cope with increasingly volatile weather driven by climate change. Traveling from the southern port city of Abidjan to the cocoa hub of Danané, near the western border, the outcome of the worst windy season in six years was evident. A stop in Tiassale showed shriveled flowers and trees bearing barely any pods. ICCO forecasts the country’s production to climb about 10% this season, although the adverse weather will keep output well shy of its prior peaks.
Drought still blankets more than a third of the nation and half of Ghana, according to data from the African Flood and Drought Monitor. Those conditions are forecast to improve, with some areas already picking up rains recently, but the dryness hampered Ivory Coast’s mid-crop harvest that started this month. "The long dry season has been harsh on trees and there's very little we can do on the farms until we have good rains," said Yabao Madi, a farmer in Duekoue, a town about 500 kilometers from Abidjan. "This kind of weather remains the biggest problem. But even when the rain falls, output will be less.”
Some young plantations in the western region of Ghana also looked in dire need of water. "We’ve not done serious irrigation,” Abbey said. "So any time there’s a distortion in the weather patterns, then it creates problems for us.” Cocoa traders will be keeping close watch over the region in coming months to see if better rains arrive. Trees will soon start developing the pods for the main harvest that kicks off in October, a key factor for whether the world’s fragile cocoa surplus can be sustained.
Until there’s more certainty, the market is reckoning with demand cutbacks and manufacturers have warned chocolate prices have further to climb, with looming U.S. tariffs potentially exacerbating the situation there. Any recovery in Ivory Coast and Ghana’s production next season is unlikely to reach the levels seen before the big weather and crop disease problems set in, Parkman said. "I’m nervous about what the new crop is going to bring,” he said. "Things should improve, but we’ve got to actually see it. Everybody’s waiting on tenterhooks to see what the early pod counts will look like."
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