In April 2024, cocoa prices on the New York and London futures markets surged past US$12,000 per tonne, a significant rise from the decade average of US$2,500 and US$4,000 in January 2024. This increase was not linked to demand fluctuations, as chocolate consumption held steady, but was instead attributed to supply challenges. C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire and Ghana, which contribute 60% of the global cocoa supply, faced notably poor harvests due to unfavorable weather. Ghana\u2019s output plummeted to a 22-year low of 425,000 tonnes, while C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire’s yield decreased by approximately 21%.<\/p>\n
Cocoa supply worldwide is predominantly centered in West Africa, especially in C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire and Ghana, where conditions are ideally suited for cocoa cultivation, leaving little ability for alternative regions to compensate for supply deficits during unfavorable years. The 2023-24 growing season suffered from excessive rainfall leading to fungal infections, followed by a drought and a heatwave intensified by climate change, increasing the frequency and severity of such weather events.<\/p>\n
The surge in cocoa prices highlights the market’s susceptibility to concentrated regional production and severe climatic events. The international cocoa futures market reacted to the supply gap by driving prices higher, impacting the costs of chocolate products on a global scale, although much of this price increase did not reach cocoa farmers due to fixed farmgate prices. By mid-2025, better harvests had reduced cocoa prices by half, yet the core problem persists: the entire industry is at the mercy of climatic variations in a single region. Future extreme weather events could once more disrupt the sector, given that prevailing climate trends suggest deteriorating conditions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In April 2024, cocoa prices on the New York and London futures markets surged past US$12,000 per tonne, a significant rise from the decade average of US$2,500 and US$4,000 in January 2024. This increase was not linked to demand fluctuations, as chocolate consumption held steady, but was instead attributed to supply challenges. C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376485,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[179],"class_list":["post-376484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-source-scienceblog-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wolfscientific.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wolfscientific.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wolfscientific.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wolfscientific.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wolfscientific.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=376484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wolfscientific.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wolfscientific.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/376485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wolfscientific.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=376484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wolfscientific.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=376484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wolfscientific.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=376484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}