100 Years of Cocoa Prices - a chart to graphically show what has happened
This chart documents 100 years of cocoa price history. After decades of volatility, prices surged to all-time records in 2024 and 2025 — driven by catastrophic crop failures, widespread tree disease, and generations of underinvestment in West African cocoa farming.
The sharp price collapse that followed might seem like welcome relief. Lower cocoa prices should translate to cheaper chocolate. Instead, the crash has created a new crisis: prices have fallen so low that the cost of harvesting now exceeds what farmers are paid for their crop. Across Ghana and Ivory Coast — which together produce nearly 70% of the world's cocoa — pods are being left on the trees to rot, unpicked and unsellable.
What looks like a market correction is in reality the latest chapter in a long history of an industry that has never paid its true costs.
Read about why we like and use Grande Brut Cocoa powder here.
