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    If you’re a chocoholic you may have noticed that your habit has lately become more expensive. The price of cocoa began creeping up in the second half of 2022. Since then it has doubled, reaching an all-time high in January 2024. That steep rise spells trouble for the chocolate business and sweet-toothed consumers alike. 

    Climate patterns are partly to blame for rising costs. Cocoa is mostly produced by small farmers in West Africa. Ghana and Ivory Coast grow about 60% of the world’s crop. Last season, in 2023, the El Niño weather pattern led to unseasonably high temperatures and rainfall that ravaged crops. Total rainfall in Ivory Coast’s cocoa-growing areas in 2023 was the highest in 20 years, according to Gro Intelligence, a data firm.

    This year El Niño has brought severe drought to the cocoa farms, reducing production further. ING, a bank, estimates that this year the gap between global production and consumption will be at its widest since at least 2014. Extreme weather patterns have hit other commodities, too. Droughts in Thailand and India are affecting rice plantations. Torrential rain in Brazil, the world’s biggest sugar exporter, has affected its exports. Besides, other price pressures are specific to the cocoa industry. Swollen-shoot virus and black-pod disease — killers of cocoa trees — spread across Ghana and Ivory Coast during heavy rainfall last year. Tropical Research Services, a research company, estimates that by the end of 2023 the swollen-shoot virus had infected around 20% of Ivory Coast’s cocoa trees.

(www.economist.com, 28.02.2024. Adaptado.)

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