Cacao Prices: Up, Up, and Away
After college, I spent five years working in Bozeman as an Agricultural Market Analyst. My job was to help corn and wheat farmers find the best price for their crop and protect the price of future harvests using the futures market. Over the last year or so, I've been dusting off what I learned in that job as we navigate record prices in the cacao market.
Right now cacao prices are truly in "uncharted territory," as highlighted by the chart below that shows the price of a metric tonne of cacao since 1960. This article covers what has driven prices higher, whether or not farmers in Latin America are benefitting from these high prices, and what we are doing to navigate it all.
One note as you read on: "cacao" and "cocoa" are the same exact thing, so you will see them used interchangeably in this article.
This chart shows the price of a metric ton (2,200 pounds) of cocoa beans delivered to ports in New York. From 1960 to 2020, the price bounced between $1,000 and $4,000 per metric ton. In 2025, the price reached $11,000 per metric ton.
Why are prices up?
Around 55% of the world's cocoa beans come from Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire in West Africa. 2024 brought a "perfect storm" of growing conditions to West Africa: some places got too much rain, some got too little, and two different diseases hit cocoa farms in the region. (source)
Due to this combination of poor growing conditions and disease, it’s expected that global cocoa production was down 11% in the 2023/24 growing season. And this poor production is coming at a bad time, with cocoa reserves historically “tight” at the end of the 2022/23 growing season.
One way to measure just how tight the supply of cocoa is, is to look at what’s called the “stocks-to-grindings.” These measure how much cocoa is available for purchase on the market relative to how much cocoa is being used (ground) each year. Following the 2024 growing season, stocks-to-grindings were at their lowest levels in 40 years. (source)
Given this tight supply, it’s not surprising that prices are going up: There isn't enough cocoa to go around right now, so buyers (like us) are anxious to get the cocoa beans they need to keep making chocolate.
Are farmers benefiting from higher prices?
I attended a webinar on this topic hosted by the Fine Chocolate Industry Association. The panel included industry folks from Ghana, Haiti, England, and the United States. Their take on this question was: It depends a lot on where you are.
Prices are high right now because many farmers in West Africa simply don't have cocoa beans to sell. Some countries in West Africa also have a government-defined "farm gate" price for cocoa, and a common critique is that these government-defined prices are slow to adjust to keep up with market prices. All told, farmers in Africa are the least likely to be benefitting from high cocoa prices.
Growers in other parts of the world, like Latin America, East Africa, and Southeast Asia, are more likely to be seeing benefits. They are more likely to have cocoa to sell and many of these growing regions do not have government-defined farm gate prices. One big caveat on this statement is: extreme drought impacted cocoa production in Southern Mexico, Guatemala and Belize last year, with many farmers in Belize losing their farms to wildfire. So again, farmers in Mexico and Central America may not be benefitting either.
One bright spot: producers in Ecuador, Peru, and the Dominican Republic - where growing conditions were relatively normal in 2024. Ecuador exported just 6.5% more cacao in 2024 than they did in 2023, but the value of that export was up 155% (source). We certainly hope that the long-term impact of these high prices will be more money in the hands of cocoa farmers each year, but that is still to-be-determined, and we will be sharing more on this topic in 2025.
When will prices go down?
Prices aren’t likely to go down until the stocks-to-grindings that we referenced earlier are more in line with historical norms. Two forces could make this happen: The first is that more cocoa beans hit the market, which would increase the stocks. The second is that demand for cocoa beans goes down, which would decrease the grindings.
Let’s look at each path:
Option #1 - More cocoa beans hit the market
Consider what happens in the U.S. when corn prices are really high. High prices encourage farmers to plant more corn the following growing season, and this surge in corn production helps bring down prices the following year. For this reason, tight stocks-to-use in the U.S. corn market can be resolved in one or two growing seasons.
For cocoa, that’s just not the case, since it takes four to five years for a newly planted cacao tree to begin growing pods (which hold the cocoa beans we use to make chocolate). For this reason, it could take several years for cocoa production to increase enough to make-up the ground that is needed.
Option #2 - Demand for cocoa beans go down
This is the more likely path in the near term, but early indications point to demand remaining strong even as prices have increased. In January 2025, the National Confectioners Association reported that cocoa bean grindings in North America fell just 1.2% year-over-year in Q4 of 2024 (source).
Because grindings are not slowing down significantly as prices increase and it takes five years for new cacao trees to start producing pods, we are expecting high prices to continue for the foreseeable future - which is probably a good thing - because cacao farmers have historically been paid hardly anything for their work, and these "high" prices may actually reflect the actual time, energy, and expertise it requires to grow cacao.
How are chocolate makers impacted?
It's important to note that the cocoa market has two distinct segments: the commodity market and the specialty market. The giant chocolate makers buy their cocoa from the commodity market. Craft makers like us buy cocoa from the specialty market. The record prices you are hearing about in the news are related to commodity market cocoa. However, there is such a shortage in the commodity market that companies who don't usually purchase from the specialty market are buying specialty cacao to fill the gap.
So, while the supply issues are mainly happening in West Africa, these supply issues are increasing cocoa prices in other parts of the cocoa-growing world: places like East Africa, Southeast Asia, The Pacific Islands, and Latin America – where we buy our cocoa beans from.
At present, we are most concerned about having enough cocoa beans on hand to keep our roaster roasting and grinders grinding. The origins we buy from are selling out more quickly than usual, and the risk of us running out of cocoa beans is increasing. We aren't alone in this, and all craft chocolate makers feel the need to be "long" cocoa beans from the origins they love.
What are we doing to navigate this market?
It’s an interesting time to be buying cocoa beans, for sure. To navigate all of this we are doing a few things.
The first is buying more cocoa beans than we normally would to ensure we have enough on hand to meet our needs for the next six to twelve months. We've also been forward-contracting (a fancy way to say "reserving") cocoa beans from origins that we love and want to be certain we can work with in the coming months.
The second thing we are doing is communicating more with our trade partners and farmers. We've been connecting more with the people we buy cocoa from to learn how quickly last year's crop is selling out and how the new harvest is coming along.
So in conclusion and to make a long-story-short: we have the cacao needed to keep making chocolate, and these "high" prices will hopefully put more money in the hands of cocoa farmers over the near and long-term. We will keep you posted!
As always, we encourage you to reach out if you have questions on all things cacao!