{"id":376314,"date":"2025-04-25T09:00:27","date_gmt":"2025-04-25T07:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=376314"},"modified":"2025-04-25T09:00:28","modified_gmt":"2025-04-25T07:00:28","slug":"the-cocoa-price-crisis-is-a-big-government-price-fixing-disaster-not-a-climate-change-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=376314","title":{"rendered":"The cocoa price crisis is a Big Government price fixing disaster, not a climate change one"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JoNova<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Jo Nova<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Markets Insider<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Price fixing kills the cocoa farm<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There has been a wicked price spike in cocoa beans which the usual suspects are blaming on \u201cclimate change\u201d as if your air conditioner was ruining cocoa crops in West Africa. Instead, African governments have fixed the price of cocoa for decades, forcing poor farmers to work for a pittance, and keeping the big profits for themselves. Not surprisingly, even though there is a wild price spike,\u00a0farmers in Ghana are leaving the industry<\/a>, smuggling crops out (because they get a better price). They didn\u2019t plant new trees, they ran out of money for fertilizer, and didn\u2019t try new varieties. Their children don\u2019t want to farm cocoa, and the yields are falling on old sickly plantations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, surprise, socialist government controls wrecked the industry, and they are now scrambling to put the pieces back together. Things are so desperate, the government of Ghana raised the price of cocoa by 58% last April<\/a>\u00a0and then\u00a0raised the price of cocoa by another 45%<\/a>\u00a0last September, to try to reduce the smuggling. (The government was losing too much money). At one point last year it was estimated that\u00a0a third of the national crop was lost to smuggler<\/a>s. A few months after this, the farmers were\u00a0hoarding their beans<\/a>\u00a0in expectation the government would have to give them another price rise. Just chaos for everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile other socialists use these failures to tell us they have to fix the weather and we must give them lots of money to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

It\u2019s always the way. Big Government creates a crisis and then beats us over the head with it, to demand more money and power. Greenies pretend to care about the poor, but they are happy to exploit the poor farmers of Ghana as fodder for press releases for their industrial \u201crenewable\u201d schemes, and banker friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feel the pain of these farmers. Some of them have farmed for decades, yet they have nothing to show for it, saying \u201c It feels like we are working for other people\u2019s benefit.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ghana produces the world\u2019s cocoa; why are its farmers still poor?<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 ByIbrahim Khalilulahi Usman, <\/a>January 2, 2025, Africa Feeds<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ghana has farmed cocoa for over 100 years. The country is the world\u2019s second-largest producer, behind C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire. The cocoa industry employs over a million people<\/a> and contributes about $2 billion in foreign exchange annually. In recent times, prices of the commodity have increased exponentially, pushed by extreme climate events<\/a> and supply chain crisis<\/a> on fertilizers used by farmers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet farmers like Anane and Holiata say they see little of this wealth. They point to the low prices set by the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), established in 1947. The board sets cocoa prices to regulate the industry and protect farmers from exploitation by European merchants, but farmers argue that these prices fail to reflect the crop\u2019s true value on international markets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Cocobod traders were forward selling as much as 70% of the crop one year in advance. But when weather, disease, and a lack of fertilizer hit the crop, the bureaucrats couldn\u2019t find the cocoa they\u2019d already sold. They were caught short, forced to buy cocoa on the open market which sent the prices rocketing. (If only climate models worked, eh, they could have seen this coming?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Oxfam, up to 90% of Ghanaian cocoa farmers<\/a> do not earn a living income. Many of the 800,000 smallholder farmers<\/a> who cultivate the crop survive on less than $2 a day<\/a>, struggling to afford basic needs such as food, clothing, housing, and healthcare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cocoa industry is rife with human rights issues<\/a>, like forced child labor, and slavery. When the environmentalists start to care about pain and suffering in the here and now, instead of theoretical storms in a hundred years time, we might think they give a damn about making the world a better place.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Photo by\u00a0Charles William Adofo<\/a>\u00a0on\u00a0Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Apparently man-made climate change made it too wet, then too dry. Sure, we believe you\u2026<\/em><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The weather has been bad in Ghana in the last two years, first it was too wet which rotted the old sickly trees, and then it was too dry, but no climate model on Earth predicted both these extreme seasons correctly (the witchdoctors might as well use chicken entrails), and other countries nearby suffered bad weather to<\/a>o, yet they increased their crop yield. Nigeria\u2019s cocoa exports saw a year-over-year increase of 15% in October 2024<\/a>, and Cameroon\u2019s cocoa crop<\/a> is expected to rise 7% this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Price fixing, and regulation hurts the people it was supposed to protect<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The Government of Ghana formed the price fixing board to try to protect farmers from volatile prices. Instead they trapped them in poverty and fed a bunch of bureaucrats that may destroy the local industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Under Ghanaian law<\/a>, selling cocoa to anyone other than the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) through its licensed buying companies (LBCs) is a crime. The market is tightly regulated, with prices set annually by the government through the Producer Price Review Committee (PPRC).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the government had offered a service but not forced it upon the farmers, the Cocobod bureaucrats would have had to stay competitive, or the farmers would have abandoned it to make their own deals. But there were no brakes or accountability on the government. In the end, the farmers did abandon it, but years too late, because it was against the law to smuggle the cocoa out of the country \u2014 so the farmers had to be desperate before they would take the risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It takes up to five years to grow new cocoa plants, so chocolate will be expensive until the free market solves itself, which it will, as long as the government gets out of the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Together the Ivory Coast and Ghana provide 60% of global cocoa, they have a nice little monopoly. But with these latest price spikes, many other countries are planting cocoa beans and soon there will be a lot more competition. The West African cartel have just wrecked their own competitive advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quote of the day: D<\/strong>espite the shocking price rise, chocolate consumption is \u201cinelastic\u201d.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There has been a wicked price spike in cocoa beans which the usual suspects are blaming on \u201cclimate change\u201d as if your air conditioner was ruining cocoa crops in West Africa. Instead, African governments have fixed the price of cocoa for decades, forcing poor farmers to work for a pittance, and keeping the big profits for themselves. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":376323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691834273,691818056,691820502,691821564,691827723,691834703,691834702,691822250],"class_list":{"0":"post-376314","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-cote-divoire","9":"tag-climate-change","10":"tag-cocoa","11":"tag-control","12":"tag-ghana","13":"tag-ghana-cocoa-board-cocobod","14":"tag-price-crisis","15":"tag-west-africa","17":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/0Cocoa-Farming-in-West-Africar2.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1zTA","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":436875,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=436875","url_meta":{"origin":376314,"position":0},"title":"\u2018Easter Eggflation\u2019 is Not Due to Climate Change, Euro News","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"03\/04\/2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Euro News posted an article, \u201c\u2018Easter eggflation\u2019: How climate change and budget cuts have sent the price of chocolate soaring,\u201d claiming that global warming is leading to the destruction of cocoa production in West Africa, which is leading to ever higher prices for chocolate. Based on real world data, this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Climate change\"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-change"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0bru-no-rabbit-4937620-scaled-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0bru-no-rabbit-4937620-scaled-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0bru-no-rabbit-4937620-scaled-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0bru-no-rabbit-4937620-scaled-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0bru-no-rabbit-4937620-scaled-1.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":440210,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=440210","url_meta":{"origin":376314,"position":1},"title":"Great Climate Chocolate Scare Melts Away as Global Cocoa Bean Prices Slump by 75%","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"18\/04\/2026","format":false,"excerpt":"After two years of weather-driven harvest failures in West Africa sent cocoa prices skyrocketing, the market has corrected dramatically\u2014and the doomsday predictions are melting faster than a cheap Easter egg.","rel":"","context":"In \"BBC\"","block_context":{"text":"BBC","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=bbc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0-Great-Climate-Chocolate-Scare-Melts-Away-as-Global-Cocoa-Bean-Prices-Slump-by-75.jpg?fit=784%2C1168&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0-Great-Climate-Chocolate-Scare-Melts-Away-as-Global-Cocoa-Bean-Prices-Slump-by-75.jpg?fit=784%2C1168&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0-Great-Climate-Chocolate-Scare-Melts-Away-as-Global-Cocoa-Bean-Prices-Slump-by-75.jpg?fit=784%2C1168&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/0-Great-Climate-Chocolate-Scare-Melts-Away-as-Global-Cocoa-Bean-Prices-Slump-by-75.jpg?fit=784%2C1168&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":276706,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=276706","url_meta":{"origin":376314,"position":2},"title":"Bloomberg Falsely Says Climate Change is Harming Crop Production, Reality Says Otherwise","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"01\/09\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"A recent post at Bloomberg, titled \u201cClimate Change Is Helping Pests and Diseases Destroy Our Food,\u201d\u00a0claims that recent crop shortages are due to increases in pest infestations and disease because of climate change. 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But did you know that climate change is one of the reasons?","rel":"","context":"In \"BBC\"","block_context":{"text":"BBC","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=bbc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/0-Easter-Eggs.jpeg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/0-Easter-Eggs.jpeg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/0-Easter-Eggs.jpeg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/0-Easter-Eggs.jpeg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/0-Easter-Eggs.jpeg?fit=1200%2C900&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":263972,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=263972","url_meta":{"origin":376314,"position":4},"title":"Correct, CNN, Cocoa Prices Are Due to Natural Weather Conditions and Disease","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"26\/06\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"A recent story published to CNN\u2019s website helpfully explains the reasons behind rising cocoa prices, and some of the struggles that cocoa farmers around the world have been facing during the past season. 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This is false. The Independent cites a study using a novel, recently developed AI model\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"AI model forecasting\"","block_context":{"text":"AI model forecasting","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=ai-model-forecasting"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/0chocolates-2224998_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C713&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/0chocolates-2224998_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C713&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/0chocolates-2224998_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C713&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/0chocolates-2224998_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C713&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/0chocolates-2224998_1280.jpg?fit=1200%2C713&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/121246920"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=376314"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376314\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":376325,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376314\/revisions\/376325"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/376323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=376314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=376314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=376314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}