Ghanaian cocoa farmers are anticipating a recovery in the 2024/2025 season, starting in October, following a significant drop in production this season that has driven global cocoa prices to unprecedented highs.
This season, Ghana experienced one of its worst harvests in a decade due to severe weather from El Niño, extensive smuggling, and swollen shoot disease.
An increase in cocoa production would not only benefit Ghana’s economy but also support the global chocolate industry, which has been facing supply shortages.
Over two dozen cocoa farmers, COCOBOD officials, and buyers predict a rebound in output next season, thanks to improved weather conditions and efforts to rehabilitate areas affected by disease and illegal gold mining.
Despite this optimism, swollen shoot disease remains a significant issue, with the International Cocoa Organisation estimating that most of one of Ghana’s key cocoa-growing regions is still affected.
Nevertheless, farmers in several cocoa-growing areas have reported that rainfall has been timely and well-distributed with periods of sunshine since March, creating favorable conditions for cocoa flowering and pod development.
“This year really looks great. I have not seen pods this much since 2020 and I see harvest being better next season,” said George Opoku Koduah, a cocoa farmer in Ghana’s western south Prestea district, a major cocoa growing area.
Koduah said he expected raise output to 1,000 in 2024/25 from 600 bags harvested this season if he could prevent black pod disease attack by August – when it often strikes.
Theophilus Tamakloe from central Ghana’s Assin Fosu community said he expected to harvest 400 to 600 bags of cocoa next season after he harvested 180 bags this season, judging from the pods on his farm.
However, farmers said they remained concerned abut inadequate fertilizer and pesticides supply, low wholesalecocoa prices, delayed payments and bean smuggling.
Fertilizer and pesticides
Ghana’s cocoa regulator supplies farmers with pesticides, fungicides and other chemicals but farmers in eastern Ghana’s Volta and Oti regions said delays in fertilizer and pesticide supplies contributed to low harvests during the past two seasons.
Stephen Mensah, a cocoa farmer from Likpe Agborzume in eastern Ghana, reported that due to tight supplies, he could only apply the recommended black pod-curing fungicide to his two-hectare farm once a month instead of every two weeks.
A COCOBOD spokesperson explained that while the regulator has ample chemicals in stock, distribution is based on need to prevent misuse, smuggling, and hoarding.
Ghana typically finances cocoa bean purchases through an annual syndicated loan arranged at the beginning of the season in October. However, this season’s loan faced delays, with COCOBOD ultimately securing only $600 million of the $800 million initially agreed upon.
Licensed cocoa buyers noted that insufficient funding has contributed to smuggling in border areas with Togo and Ivory Coast, where cocoa prices are more than double Ghana’s farmgate price.
Nana Johnson Mensah Kagya, a major farmer in Ghana’s western south region with around 80 hectares of plantations, said he feared output recovery would be eroded by smuggling, which reduces the officially reported output, and consequently funds allocated for regulated bean purchases.