When I reflect on 2024, what stands out to me is that we witnessed a transformation of the way that cacao beans are valued on a global level. It’s the kind of disruptive change that a social impact entrepreneur can only dream of to happen in their own lifetime…and it happened this year.
For most of my time in chocolate so far, the global market price for cacao beans was so insanely low that it was (almost) irrelevant to our work. We priced based on giving farmers a good livelihood and protecting local ecosystems, creating reciprocity and respect.
We were still constrained by the low global price though, because it was a reference, and we could only exceed it so many times before people thought we were paying too much and it caused unwelcome disruptions in local markets.
The global price for cacao beans is largely determined by cacao production in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, and in this centralized region, cacao farmers had been underpaid and farms had been underinvested in for decades. Honestly it was a system of industrial exploitation of tropical rainforest ecosystems and peoples for low cost, bulk cacao for candy.
That meant little resilience to climate change induced droughts, extreme storms, and cacao diseases. Three years of bad conditions led to a crisis point, and 2024 saw a sudden, disruptive, and volatile change, with global prices surging 4x over previous levels.
In 2024, the high prices we used to pay for social impact cacao were a thing of the past. The commodity price for non-organic, low quality beans eclipsed what we used to pay for premium, regenerative cacao beans, and we had to race to stay ahead of it.
With such volatility in the global market, many of the poorest farmers didn’t benefit and middle men and traders pocketed the difference. But our teams on the ground were committed to getting more money into the hands of our farmers, adjusting prices paid for cacao beans weekly to follow the rapid rise of the market. This benefited our hard working farmers way more than we ever could have as a small company trying to fight an impossibly low global market price.
To stay ahead of the global price with a premium for the sort of quality we’re looking for in ceremonial cacao, internally we’re paying as much as double what we used to. While that’s a challenge on our side to keep producing a product that’s affordable for all of you, it’s a status quo interruption on the supply chain side of things that is a huge celebration for the farmers in our networks, and as a result we’re celebrating too.
Some analysts had predicted a drop in prices right about now, but we’re excited to see that they continue to be high, offering incredible opportunity for our farmers. To be honest we may need to raise prices again in 2025 to keep up, but we’re excited that it’s a part of recalibrating our relationships with cacao not just for candy consumption, but for the many healing benefits it offers.
High cacao bean prices bring hope to a new generation of cacao farmers, support the costs of organic and regenerative agroforestry, and give farmers more money to invest in the well being of their families. It’s not lost on us that this is a singular opportunity to engage the world in conversations about how to properly value cacao, and to make sure that cacao prices never go back to the status quo that we just emerged from.
I give great gratitude to all of you for understanding and appreciating how special the cacao we produce is, and supporting us to make the most of this transformative moment in cacao.
It truly could be a new era for chocolate. Amidst the global chaos about the price of cacao, ceremonial cacao offers a clear pathway to providing high value sustainable livelihoods for vast networks of family farms, while protecting tropical rainforest ecology, and offering immense health benefits and delicious satisfaction for chocolate lovers.
With Gratitude,
Jonas
