Cocoa is more expensive than it has been for decades. The price has doubled in the space of a year alone and now stands at USD 5,874 per ton on the New York Commodity Exchange. This means that the price of the most important ingredient in chocolate production has roughly doubled within a year.

The final price of chocolate products will also increase significantly as a result. Compared to 2020, prices have already risen by more than 19%. Rising demand on the one hand and failed harvests in Ghana and Ivory Coast, which are the world's two biggest producers of cocoa beans.on the other  have driven up prices.

For many products in the food sector, there is only a small geographical area in the world where the climatic conditions required for cultivation prevail. Climate change and the increasingly frequent extreme weather conditions it causes are increasing the risk of crop failures, as can now be seen with cocoa.

In Ivory Coast, the world's biggest cocoa producer, above-average rainfall caused the blossoms to be damaged first. The fruits that could still be harvested were often rotten from the inside and inedible due to the prolonged moisture. The harvest yield was only a quarter of that of the previous year. (Almost half of German imports came from Ivory Coast last year.) But the situation is not better in the second most important cocoa country, neighbouring Ghana. Here, the rain has led to a massive spread of a fungal disease, the "black pod". Due to this ten per cent of the harvest fell victim.

In addition, more and more illegal gold prospectors are buying plantation land and engaging in illegal mining. (‚Norddeutsche Mission‘ (=Bremen Mission) has already reported on this in one of it‘s previous newsletters.) The area under cultivation has now shrunk noticeably, although the conversion of cocoa plantations is actually prohibited in the country. Illegal mining is poisoning the water and soil with chemicals and deforestation is increasing. As a direct consequence, the land will be unusable for a long time.

However, the end consumers of cocoa in Europe and America won’t probably really suffer. The victims are the producing countries and, above all, the cocoa farmers. This is because the high cocoa prices do not reach them. Instead, climate change is leaving its mark, the extent of which cannot yet be estimated. To make matters worse, West Africa is currently suffering from high inflation. All of this is leading to a revenue crisis, which is making it increasingly difficult to buy fertilisers, pesticides and to use assistants on the plantations for the next harvest.

The loss of income from the cocoa harvest is threatening the livelihoods of farmers and putting a massive strain on the economic situation in Ghana and Ivory Coast.