{"id":1531352,"date":"2025-04-20T11:35:00","date_gmt":"2025-04-20T15:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1531352"},"modified":"2025-04-20T11:35:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-20T15:35:00","slug":"cocoa-the-global-trade-of-brown-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/cocoa-the-global-trade-of-brown-gold\/1531352\/","title":{"rendered":"Cocoa: The Global Trade Of &#8220;Brown Gold&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"field field--name-title field--type-string field--label-hidden\">Cocoa: The Global Trade Of &#8220;Brown Gold&#8221;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"clearfix text-formatted field field--name-body field--type-text-with-summary field--label-hidden field__item\">\n<p><strong>Last year, a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/topics\/3211\/cocoa-industry\/\">cocoa<\/a>\u00a0shortage drove up prices for European chocolate makers and consumers.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This was largely due to an exceptionally wet rainy season as well as a viral cocoa disease that severely impacted the 2023\/2024 harvest in West Africa. However, the situation is expected to improve this year, according to industry experts.<\/p>\n<p>In a note published at the end of February, the International Cocoa Organization <strong>(<a href=\"https:\/\/www.icco.org\/statistics\/#data\">ICCO<\/a>) estimated that the 2024\/2025 harvest is expected to show a surplus, after three consecutive years of deficit.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/chart\/34325\/main-cocoa-bean-producing-and-importing-countries\/\">As Statista&#8217;s Anna Fleck shows in the following chart,<\/a> the global cocoa market relies heavily on harvests in the Gulf of Guinea for its supply.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Nearly 65 percent \u200b\u200bof the world&#8217;s cocoa is harvested in just four West African countries:<\/strong> C\u00f4te d&#8217;Ivoire (38 percent), Ghana (12 percent), Nigeria (7 percent), and Cameroon (7 percent).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/chart\/34325\/main-cocoa-bean-producing-and-importing-countries\/\" title=\"Infographic: Cocoa: The Global Trade of \u201cBrown Gold\u201d | Statista\"><\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><em>You will find more infographics at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/chartoftheday\/\">Statista<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>South America comes in a distant second place for volume<\/strong>, with Ecuador and Brazil as the main producing countries, accounting for 10 percent and 4 percent of global production, respectively.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The vast majority of the world&#8217;s cocoa is then exported to Europe and North America,<\/strong> where it is processed into\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/topics\/1638\/chocolate-industry\/\">chocolate<\/a>\u00a0and primarily consumed.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium, for example, together import approximately 25 percent of the world&#8217;s cocoa beans. This makes the European Union the world&#8217;s largest importer of cocoa, accounting for 60 percent of global imports.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The United States and Canada, for their part, together import the equivalent of approximately seven percent of global production.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>      <span class=\"field field--name-uid field--type-entity-reference field--label-hidden\"><a title=\"View user profile.\" href=\"https:\/\/cms.zerohedge.com\/users\/tyler-durden\" class=\"username\">Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"field field--name-created field--type-created field--label-hidden\">Sun, 04\/20\/2025 &#8211; 07:35<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u200b<a href=\"https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/commodities\/cocoa-global-trade-brown-gold\" target=\"_blank\" class=\"\">https:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/commodities\/cocoa-global-trade-brown-gold<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cocoa: The Global Trade Of &#8220;Brown Gold&#8221; Last year, a\u00a0cocoa\u00a0shortage drove up prices for European chocolate makers and consumers.\u00a0 This was largely due to an&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1531353,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1531352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbimBl-6qne","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2025\/04\/34325-r10dry.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1531352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1531352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1531353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1531352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1531352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1531352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}