Cacao Breaks $10,000/Ton After Three Straight Bad West African Harvests From Extreme Weather, El Nino

Around the world this holiday weekend, people will consume hundreds of millions of Easter eggs and bunnies, as part of an annual chocolate intake that can exceed 8kg (18lb) for every person in the UK, or 5kg in the US and Europe. But a global shortage of cacao – the seed from which chocolate is made – has brought warnings of a “chocolate meltdown” that could see prices increase and bars shrink further.

This week, cocoa prices rose to all-time highs on commodity exchanges in London and New York, reaching more than $10,000 a tonne for the first time, after the third consecutive poor harvest in west Africa. Ghana and Ivory Coast, which together produce more than half of the global cacao crop, have been hit by extreme weather supercharged by the climate crisis and the El Niño weather phenomenon. This has been exacerbated by disease and underinvestment in ageing plantations.

The poor harvest has left chocolate producers scrambling to secure their supply, with many warning of more price rises and potential reductions in the size of bars and sweets. A spokesperson for Nestlé, which owns chocolate brands such as KitKat, Smarties and Quality Street, said prices for consumers may need to increase after cocoa prices tripled in a year.

Hedge funds have made major bets on the price of the commodity this year, with speculators gambling more than $8bn (£6.3bn) that prices would continue to rise, according to the Financial Times. But none of the money will make it to smallholder producers in west Africa, with Ghana and Ivory Coast having already sold this year’s crop through a cartel, leaving many farmers disgruntled.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/mar/29/easter-eggs-chocolate-cacao-harvests-cocoa-prices-aoe