Cocoa prices witnessed a crazy rise, breaking records due to the weather conditions that struck the crops of the largest producing countries, Ghana and Ivory Coast, and the spread of “black horn” disease, which destroyed this year’s crop, and all of this led to the price of a ton reaching $5,288 in the New York market. This is its highest level in 46 years. “In 20 years, I have not seen a harvest like this,” Siaka Sylla, head of a commercial cooperative of 500 farmers in southern Ivory Coast, lamented. “The rain has ruined our crops,” he told AFP in an interview.
West Africa is the world’s largest producer of the commodity that is mostly used to make chocolate. Despite the troubled harvest, demand is outstripping supply, and cocoa prices have more than doubled since the start of 2023.
Recently, the price of cocoa in London rose to 4,248 pounds sterling per ton, and in New York, for the first time in 46 years, it reached 5,288 dollars per ton.
Carsten Fritsch, an analyst at Commerzbank in Frankfurt, noted: “It seems that it is only a matter of time before the price of cocoa in New York approaches the all-time high of $3,795 per ton in 1977.” Prices last year topped previous peaks from 2011. , when the market was threatened after fears of the impact of elections in Ivory Coast, and the decline in production was a major catalyst for the explosion in prices over the past 12 months.
An increasing number of farmers in West Africa have reported plant diseases after heavy rains that cause the spread of black pod disease. The plant needs a careful balance between alternating sunlight and rainfall in order to thrive. July of last year was rainy, especially in southern Ivory Coast. Just as the plants were flowering, as a result the Cocoa Coffee Board suspended the sale of export contracts. “It is a very difficult crop,” Sella said. “We will reach 900 tons compared to about 3,000 tons last year.”
Industry estimates indicate that cocoa shipments at Ivory Coast ports fell by 35% between October and the end of January of the previous year, and producers are facing new disruptions; Due to the return of the El Niño climate phenomenon that threatens West Africa, Fritsche warned, “This means that the cocoa market is also likely to face a supply deficit in the current year 2023-2024, and the third in a row.” El Niño is called unstable weather and causes drought in Some areas and flooding in others, and is expected to continue until April.
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