Cocoa prices

Cocoa crisis in West Africa – the sacks are piling up

The global cocoa price has soared in recent years, but cocoa farmers in the major West African producers Ghana and Ivory Coast have not had a share of the pie during the boom. This is reported by the AP and BBC in separate reports.

Now that prices have collapsed from their peak levels, the crisis is escalating.

The basic problem in both countries is that the state has priced the cocoa beans a year early. When prices recently fell after the big boom, farmers are left with price tags that are 40 percent more expensive than what anyone on the international market is willing to pay. The sacks of cocoa beans are piling up.

State actors have stepped in and bought large parts of the harvest to save the industry, but in many cases payments are delayed. All that remains is a single “mess” for hundreds of thousands of farmers in the countries, writes the BBC.

The price collapse is due to a sharp drop in demand. As prices have risen, many of the world's chocolate manufacturers have started making smaller products, using less cocoa.

52-year-old Manu: I risk dying a poor man

Manu Yaw Fofie, 52, in Ghana, was born into the cocoa industry and inherited his land, but when global cocoa prices plummeted, the land in question became a burden. Now he is desperate for money and has felt compelled to act, he tells the AP.

Despite it being illegal, he has allowed dirty businessmen to extract sand from his cocoa plantation, a lucrative business as the sand is later used to make concrete. But the solution is short-term. The extraction destroys his opportunities to grow.

- If I keep this cocoa plantation for 10 years, I will die a poor man, he says.

Just like Manu Yaw Fofie, many other pressured cocoa farmers in the major producers Ghana and Ivory Coast have been forced to act to raise money in other ways when cocoa prices plummet.