COCOA farmers in Brazil have slammed the brakes on new planting projects following a 70 per cent plunge in cocoa prices from their 2024 record high, stalling growth that investors had expected would make the country a major supplier of the main ingredient in chocolate.
At current prices of around $3,000 per metric ton, farmers and analysts told Reuters they expected around half the projects in Brazil to grow cocoa on an industrial scale could be canceled.
The projects, centered in Northeastern Brazil, would have added at least some 75,000 hectares of growing area, according to an estimate by supply chain services provider Czarnikow, enough to supply nearly 5 per cent of the global demand for cocoa.
“I think Brazil expansion plans have had a massive cold shower,” said Paulo Torres, a London-based cocoa industry advisor and cocoa farmer in Brazil’s Bahia state. Torres himself canceled a plan for an additional 30 hectares of cocoa at his farm in Bahia.
Current prices do not cover the investment or production costs of new fields, making the Brazilian projects unfeasible, he said.
