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2023–24: West Africa's cocoa deficit — the fourfold repricing

2023 – Dec 2024

The lesson: Three straight deficits — dry weather, disease, and years of underinvestment — repriced cocoa more than fourfold in under two years. Then high prices did what high prices do: grindings fell, supply recovered, and a third of the peak vanished in a quarter.

What happened

West Africa's 2023/24 season combined dry Harmattan conditions (Maxar) with heavy rains that spread black pod disease and hurt bean quality; the swollen shoot virus infected an estimated fifth of Ivory Coast's crop (Tropical Research Services, via Nasdaq). Ivorian port arrivals ran nearly a third below the prior year into mid-2024, and trader Ecom projected Ivorian output down more than a fifth to an 8-year low of 1.75 million tonnes. In November 2024 ICCO raised its 2023/24 global deficit estimate to 478,000 tonnes — the largest in over 60 years — with production down about an eighth year-on-year and the stocks-to-grindings ratio at a 46-year low. NY cocoa set an all-time high of $12,931 per tonne on 18 Dec 2024. Demand then broke: fourth-quarter 2024 grindings fell to multi-year lows in Europe, Asia and North America, and ICCO projected a 2024/25 surplus of 49,000 tonnes — the first in four years.

Weather context
  • Ghana (cocoa belt centroid) (Oct 2023-Mar 2024): +0.81°C vs the 1991–2020 baseline; rainfall +43.3% vs baseline (122 days with <1mm rain). Rainfall ran 43% above normal across the 2023/24 main-crop window at this Ghana centroid — the heavy-rains half of the crisis (black pod disease); the dry Harmattan half is documented in the record's sources, not in this window mean.

One region centroid is illustrative, not field-level truth; baseline is the 1991–2020 day-of-year mean. Weather data provided by Open-Meteo.com.

What everyone expected

ICCO 'reports a third consecutive global shortfall this season and warns of another potential deficit next year' (Finimize, Dec 2024) — at the peak, the market was pricing a fourth straight deficit.

As reported at the time: Finimize, Dec 2024

What actually happened

  • Cocoa
    2023-01 → 2024-12 · CC=F month-end closes
    +352.3%

    Under two years, more than a fourfold repricing.

  • Cocoa
    2023-01 → 2024-03 · CC=F month-end closes
    +278.4%

    The first leg: deficit fears through the main crop.

  • Cocoa
    2024-12 → 2025-03 · CC=F month-end closes
    -32.3%

    The turn: surplus forecast and demand destruction.

Month-end closes miss the $12,931 intraday peak, so the monthly series understates the top. Disease incidence figures (for example, the swollen-shoot infection estimate) are trade estimates, not surveyed fact.

The assessment

This was a structural repricing, not a one-season scare: disease and aging trees don't heal with one rain. But the episode still ended the classic way — demand destruction (grindings at multi-year lows across all three regions by late 2024) plus a supply response (2024/25 output up, per ICCO). The Hershey tell: when a major chocolate maker seeks a CFTC exemption to take 90,000 tonnes off the exchange because physical supply is tighter than futures, the market has stopped trusting the paper price — usually near the top.

How this record has changed

Living document — every material change is logged here, newest first.

  1. New evidence2026-09-23

    Cocoa broke decisively lower the week of September 14-20: ICE December New York cocoa fell 10.64% from $5,961 to $5,327 per tonne, breaking the early-September consolidation band and closing below its 50-day average for the first time since the June advance (CropGPT, September 22). The fall was corroborated across sources: NY cocoa dropped 4.9% on September 18 to $5,603/tonne, a third straight weekly loss (Reuters, September 18). The driver is record nearby supply overwhelming next-season downgrades: Ivory Coast port arrivals of 2.14 million tonnes (+18% year-on-year), ICE certified stocks at a two-year high of about 3.44 million bags, and European Q2 grindings down 4.6% to 316,366 tonnes (weakest in six years), against StoneX cutting its 2026/27 surplus estimate to 25,000 tonnes (from 149,000 in April) and Guan Chong projecting a 300,000–400,000-tonne deficit (CropGPT, September 22). Ivory Coast expects port arrivals to accelerate, with about 26,000 tons arriving September 1-13 (Reuters). New downside thread: Ghana's licensed buying companies are reportedly owed about $349 million with six-month arrears, with effective farmgate prices down from about $308 to about $220 per bag — single-sourced to CropGPT's September 22 report and flagged for verification.

    CropGPT, 22 Sep 2026 · Reuters via maritimeprofessional, 18 Sep 2026

  2. New evidence2026-09-18

    CC=F cocoa sat at $5,620 per tonne as of 2026-09-17, down 5.72% over five days and 7.05% over twenty days (Morrowfly monitor dashboard run, 2026-09-18), while the monitor scored cocoa QUIET (total 2, supply 2). Headlines reflect the split: TradingView's 'Cocoa Prices Plummet on Ample Near-Term Supplies' (2026-09-18) against the LatinAmerican Post's 'Cocoa Farmers Face a Bitter Twist as Heavy Rains Threaten Their Harvests' (2026-09-16) and CBC coverage of the early production threat expected to get worse (2026-09-15). The market is pricing ample near-term supply over the emerging West African weather risk — a tension worth watching as the season develops. No forecast or transmission claim is made here beyond what was observed.

    Morrowfly monitor dashboard run 2026-09-18 (CC=F price history and commodity score) · TradingView (Barchart), 'Cocoa Prices Plummet on Ample Near-Term Supplies', 2026-09-18 · LatinAmerican Post, 'Cocoa Farmers Face a Bitter Twist as Heavy Rains Threaten Their Harvests', 2026-09-16 · CBC, early production threat expected to get worse, 2026-09-15

  3. New evidence2026-09-17

    Added ERA5 weather reanalysis context for the Oct 2023-Mar 2024 main-crop window at the Ghana cocoa belt centroid: +0.81 C mean temperature anomaly vs the 1991-2020 baseline, rainfall 43.3% above normal — the heavy-rains half of the crisis (black pod disease). Computed 2026-09-17 from the v1_2026-09-15 raw daily series with the same window_anomalies() method (addendum CSV in research). Attribution: weather data provided by Open-Meteo.com.

    Morrowfly research vintage v1_2026-09-15 + 2026-09-17 window addendum (ERA5 reanalysis via Open-Meteo)

  4. Correction2026-09-15

    Seed revision marking this record as published under the adversarial-review standard established 2026-09-15: outcome figures recomputed from Morrowfly's own month-end price history, intraday peaks confined to mechanism prose, and no bare '%' figures in narratives. Applied at creation, before any public revision.

    Morrowfly internal adversarial review standard (15 Sep 2026)

Transmission

  • Cocoa
    production loss

    Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana are roughly half of world cocoa output; ICCO's 2023/24 deficit of 478,000 tonnes was the largest in 60+ years (ICCO via Barchart, Nov 2024).

Sources

Notes

  • Prices are month-end closes from our series unless noted; windows are labeled beside each number.
  • Secondary press quotes are reported as published and were not individually audited against primary sources.
  • Illustrative scenario record. Not a prediction. Not financial advice.