The cocoa sector has experienced heightened volatility in recent years, driven by market volatility, environmental degradation, and human rights challenges.
“As cocoa prices soar to record highs, millions of smallholder farmers in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria, who produce most of the world’s cocoa remain trapped in poverty”.
The Cocoa Barometer 2025 in a statement signed by Nana Yaw Reuben and copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra revealed that West Africa’s producers continued to bear the heaviest burdens of climate shocks, governance gaps, and unfair value distribution.
“Three things are happening simultaneously in the cocoa sector: it is bad, it is better than before and there is a lot of room for improvement.
“Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana together produce more than 60 percent of the world’s cocoa, shaping global prices and policy, while Nigeria is emerging as a major player, projected to produce 350,000 tonnes in the 2024/25 season. Yet despite this dominance, most farmers have not benefited from the recent price surge”.
Mr Reuben said forward-selling mechanisms had delayed price increases, while yields continued to decline due to aging trees, crop diseases, and erratic rainfall linked to climate change.
The Cocoa Barometer also highlighted that farmer poverty was at the root of virtually all problems in the cocoa sector, from deforestation to child labour and gender inequality.
“Paying farmers fairly is both a moral and legal obligation, thanks to new human rights and environmental legislation. But political resistance in Europe is threatening the hard-won progress in regulation.
He said high prices were driving a boom in cocoa production, while deforestation due to cocoa was currently spreading to new regions in West Africa.
“Within a few years, this boom will lead to oversupply and falling prices, just as in 2016. Cocoa-growing communities remain in the grip of climate change, deforestation, and human rights violations. 1.5 million Children still work in dangerous conditions in cocoa farming in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. Women, who do the majority of farm work, remain excluded from decision-making and profit sharing”.
The Cocoa Barometer said Farm workers and tenant farmers, vital to cocoa farm years were consistently overlooked in discussions about farmers and cocoa cultivation, even though they were crucial to cocoa cultivation and are the most vulnerable.
“At the same time, new regulations and stronger collaboration in the sector show that systemic change is possible.
On governance and accountability the Cocoa Barometer attributed much of the sector’s fragility to weak governance and policy gaps.
It indicated supply management remained largely absent, leaving farmers vulnerable to volatile markets, and the lack of transparency in cocoa sales, including farm gate pricing, continues to limit accountability.
Mr Reuben of the 2025 Cocoa Barometer emphasized that despite the challenges, change was possible and called for stronger collaboration within the sector among farmers, governments, companies, and civil society toward systemic change.
The barometer also called for urgent action from the entire sector, including: Fair pay: committed to a living income for farmers, Protecting forests: a global moratorium on deforestation from cocoa cultivation, Farmers, women and men, to be recognised as co-decision makers and to be transparent: to implement transparency and accountability mechanisms throughout the supply chain.
The Cocoa Barometer is a state-of-sustainability overview of the sector published by a consortium of civil society organisations.
It highlights current challenges and progress and offers a long-term overview of major developments over the past decades, while sketching potential future developments and emerging risks.
GNA
