El Niño-linked West Africa weather drives soaring cocoa prices

If you’re buying chocolate bunnies for Easter this weekend, it might be best to stock up. The price of those rabbits is about to hop sky-high.
Prices for cocoa — the key ingredient for chocolate — this past week scaled record peaks above $9,000 a tonne. This time last year, cocoa was fetching $2,500 a tonne.
A perfect storm of extreme weather linked to the El Niño weather pattern has decimated the cocoa crop in Ivory Coast and Ghana, which account for a combined 60% of global production.
“In December 2023, both countries experienced intense rains that decimated cocoa yields; the…