Manu Yaw Fofie, a 52-year-old cocoa farmer in Ghana, described a crisis that has overturned how he can earn from the land. He said cocoa beans have been left rotting in some West African warehouses after cocoa prices fell sharply, while global chocolate makers have scrambled for supplies and local households have struggled with lost income.
Fofie said he has taken what he described as a desperate step: giving part of his land to illegal sand miners. He said the sand mining has made the land infertile, compounding years of declining yields. He also said his annual cocoa bean yields have dropped from a past heyday of 300 bags to 50 bags in 2025, with climate change among factors affecting productivity.
Other farmers in Ghana and Ivory Coast described similar shifts in land use as the commodity downturn deepened. The two countries are responsible for nearly 70% of the world’s cocoa bean supply, and farmers in both places said they are under pressure because the whiplash in global pricing has made their expected returns unstable. In Ivory Coast, which the report described as the world’s leading cocoa producer, cocoa bean exports account for about 40% of export revenue; in Ghana, cocoa accounts for nearly 15%.
The AP reported that Ivory Coast had to purchase an excess supply of cocoa beans from farmers in January and then, this week, slashed the price by more than half for 2026. Edward Karaweh, former general secretary of the General Agricultural Workers Union, said Ghanaian authorities were not prepared for a downturn at the scale that followed a sharp jump and then fall in futures prices. “Preparation allows you to mitigate the crisis. It is not that you prevent the crisis altogether,” Karaweh said.
Cocoa futures rose and then crashed after a 2024 surge pushed prices to more than $12,000 per metric ton, the report said, before falling to around $4,000 as supply outstripped demand. The report said that after the downturn, global traders would run at a loss if they purchased cocoa beans from the two African countries. Farmers said that left a mounting stockpile of rotting beans in warehouses while some farmers who already sold through government systems have not been paid for months.
As beans became harder to sell and payouts lagged, farmers said they also faced structural problems that left them unable to benefit from earlier high prices. François N’Gbin, walking through cocoa trees in Ivory Coast, said blackened, dried-up pods reflected disease and a lack of rain. He said he also gave up part of his land, for a fee, to illegal gold miners, then obtained a mining license out of fear of the authorities, and that the mining area includes murky, yellowish water covering at least 1,000 square meters (1,200 square yards) on his farm.
N’Gbin said, “Today, gold is more profitable than cocoa,” adding that his calculations put earnings at 1,500 CFA francs ($2.67) per gram of gold and that he was about to negotiate an increase. Moussa Koné, president of the Ivorian cocoa farmers’ union, said other farmers have found other uses for their farms, including leasing them to illegal gold miners, and that “Cocoa is not selling, but farmers still need money to feed their families.”
Governments have moved to try to reopen markets by changing the prices paid to producers. Ghana initiated efforts to loosen regulations on price controls and, in January, cut its fixed price for cocoa beans by 28% to 41,392 cedis ($3,881) per metric ton, seeking to make beans more accessible to buyers, the report said. This week, Ivory Coast slashed the price paid to farmers by more than half to 1,200 CFA ($2.13) per kilogram ($0.97 per pound) for 2026.
But farmers said the new rates do not cover the cost of producing cocoa. Mercy Amponsah, a 50-year-old cocoa farmer in Ghana, said, “Accepting the current price means my son will have to drop out of school.” Fofie said he expects the farm cannot sustain him financially if the situation persists, adding, “If I keep this cocoa farm for the next 10 years, I would die a poor man.”