Ivory Coast cuts cocoa price with early mid-crop

A month-early mid-crop launch is slashing Ivory Coast's cocoa farmer prices to barely a third of the current rate in a desperate bid to clear massive unsold stockpiles.

Mid-crop season kicks off way ahead of schedule

• Ivory Coast is treating all cocoa harvested from 1 March 2026 as mid-crop for the first time ever.
• The Coffee and Cocoa Council will announce the exact farmer price by the end of February.
• An interministerial committee already greenlit the plan, and it takes effect immediately.
• The normal main-crop window from October to March just got chopped by a full month.

Farmer payments are about to crater

• The new mid-crop price lands between 800 and 1,000 CFA francs per kilogram.
• That is less than half the current main-crop rate of 2,800 CFA francs.
• Lower-quality mid-crop beans have always carried cheaper pricing by default.
• The government is betting that faster sales will offset the per-kilogram income hit.

Global price crash forced this drastic move

• World cocoa prices tanked over 50% from last year's record highs.
• Unsold Ivorian stocks could balloon to 200,000 tonnes by late March without intervention.
• The government already burned roughly half a billion dollars buying 100,000 tonnes directly.
• Extra buyer premiums like the origin differential, got scrapped to restart forward sales.

Ghana is dealing with the same nightmare

• Ghana slashed its farmer price by nearly a third back in mid-February.
• Both West African giants are coordinating to keep their cocoa globally competitive.
• Ivory Coast produces around 40% of the world's cocoa supply.
• Two million farming families depend on cocoa as their primary cash source.