Key takeaways
- Cocoa prices spiked from ~£2000 to as high as ~£11,000 in 2023–2025 - the fifth bull market in a century of recurring crises.
- The root cause is yield: West African cocoa yields have barely improved in 175 years, while every other staple crop has.
- Ghana's pod counts rose (12 to 28) through Cocobod's sustained farmer engagement; Côte d'Ivoire's fell (30 to 25 or less).
- Billions spent on sustainability programs since 1987 have targeted certification and child labor, not productivity, reaching only a few percent of farmers.
- Veriground delivers free, local, high-quality weather forecasts to farmers - raising yields and building goodwill between industry and farmers.
Steven Haws of Commodities Risk Analysis (CRA) has been involved in the economics of cocoa since the 1970s. His essay includes a short history of the cocoa market, points out that the lack of improvement in yields is the main reason for the crisis, and explains the proposal of CRA and Veriground for helping to resolve the crisis.
The essay opens with the price shock of 2023–2025, when cocoa jumped from around £2000 to averages near £7000 and briefly approached £11,000 before falling almost as fast as it rose. Haws places this fifth bull market within a century of recurring crises - the marketing-board disputes of the 1930s, Ghana's collapse in the 1960s, the 1970s bull market that gave rise to the International Cocoa Organization, and the long decline of stocks relative to grindings since 1991. The result has been higher retail prices, shrinking packages, products leaving shelves, and a roughly 9% fall in worldwide cocoa consumption.
At the root of the crisis, CRA argues, is yield. Unlike wheat and virtually every other staple crop, cocoa yields in West Africa have barely improved in 175 years. Pod counts show Côte d'Ivoire slipping from about 30 pods per tree to 25 or fewer, while Ghana - despite Cocobod's well-known inefficiencies - has risen from around 12 to 28 through decades of sustained engagement with farmers. The billions spent on sustainability programs since 1987 have concentrated on certification, child labor, and deforestation rather than productivity, and in any year reach only a few percent of the roughly two million cocoa farmers in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana.
CRA's proposal is Veriground, its network of weather stations across Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, and Ecuador. Veriground delivers free, local, European- and North American-quality weather forecasts directly to farmers, with no strings attached, helping them time fertilizer and pruning to raise yields while building goodwill between industry and farmers. Because the forecasts are something farmers actively want, the network also gives the industry a durable channel to the first link of its supply chain and real-time insight into crop conditions in these critical origins.