It's a tough choice. "If I send my children to school and can't bring in part of the harvest, we won't have enough money for food. Or do I take them out of school so we can harvest more cocoaand have three meals a day?" a cocoa farmer from Cote d'Ivoire, told DW.
Cocoa prices have recently plunged after the historic surge to nearly $13,000 (€11,000) per metric ton in 2024. In early April 2026, the world market price temporarily fell to $3,000, a decline of more than 75% in just over a year.
The low prices have a massive impact on the approximately 2.5 million smallholder farmers who grow cocoa in West Africa.
Farmers like Firmin Coulibaly from Cote d'Ivoire are forced to sell their cocoa beans at very low prices. "Producers are dying in poverty even though they have crops. They have no money for medicine or food," he told DW.
In Ghana, too, many farmers are suffering from delayed payments because middlemen are no longer buying their cocoa. "Because of the delayed payment, I don't have money to pay the workers who harvest the crop," Emmanuel Nojor, a cocoa farmer, said. "That's why the harvest has gone bad," he told DW. When asked how long the middlemen have been withholding his payments, he replied: "For about five months."
