logo
Chocolate love has its price on Valentine's Day as cocoa costs make hearts shudder, not flutter

Chocolate love has its price on Valentine's Day as cocoa costs make hearts shudder, not flutter

The Hill13-02-2025

BRUGES, Belgium (AP) — St. Valentine chocolates always seek to show how deep your love is. This year, it might just also show how deep your pockets are.
With the price of cocoa beans setting unprecedented records on the commodities market, it will certainly turn the gift of love into a bigger financial commitment than it once was. Turns out that if love is reputed to be eternal, a low price for cocoa, the essential ingredient in chocolate, is not.
No beans, no Valentine's chocolate
'The price increase of cocoa is absolutely spectacular, now for 2, 2½ years,' said Philippe de Sellier, the head of both Leonidas and Belgian chocolate federation Choprabisco. When it stood at less than $2,000 a ton in the summer of 2022, it really took over early last year and peaked at well over $12,000 during the Christmas season and has been hovering around the $10,000 mark since.
'We are seeing unprecedented prices. They haven't been this high for the last 50 years,' said Bart Van Besien, policy adviser of the Oxfam fair trade group. And the impact can be felt deep in chocolate gourmet country Belgium, where some of its 280 chocolate companies are left with a bleeding heart during Valentine's week.
Dominque Persoone, owner of the famed Chocolate Line brand, still has plenty of beans to grind in his workshop in Bruges, but considers himself lucky, partly because he also has his own cocoa plantation in Mexico.
'I have a lot of colleagues who are really in trouble, because the price is too high,' he said. 'If you don't have good contacts, they just don't deliver anymore.'
Some just close for Valentine, he said, turning one of the few financial bonanzas of the year into a forced vacation, hoping that Easter, with its eggs and bunnies, will bring better tidings. Many chocolatiers can't go for the usual profit margins and turn all the extra costs of the cocoa prices over to their customers. Persoone said that his chocolates increased in price by 20% over the last year alone while de Selliers said that it depends very much from producer to producer.
The perfect chocolate storm
The shock of cocoa prices pretty much is a metaphorical perfect storm, mixing climate, disease, commodity speculation, the plight of farmers and social ascendency around the world into one heady mix.
'The drop that has happened now in production was directly linked to climate change,' said Van Besien, blaming changes in annual rain and drought patterns in western Africa that weakened the sensitive trees in key production areas. Persoone also said that the temperature differences between night and day increased in the small strip of land around the equator where the trees can thrive. Compounded by disease, it made sure too many harvests failed.
At the same time across the world, populations lifted themselves out of poverty, middle classes expanded in places like China and the craving for the delicacy increased.
And making matters worse, the years of slumping prices for the beans simply drove farmers off the land to look for a better future in the cities and pushed production further down. De Selliers said that '60 % of cocoa comes from Ivory Coast and Ghana and these farmers have to make a better living. It is extremely important.'
Persoone concurred: 'We didn't pay enough to have an honest price for the farmers.'
So, strangely enough, low prices then, help cause high prices now.
'The big irony in the cocoa industry is that farmers are now getting a fair price at the moment they are abandoning cocoa farming,' Van Besien said. 'With the price they are getting right now, they could have invested in sustainable practices. They could have sent their children to school.'
Chocolate love within reach
Does it mean a premier box of chocolates is a guilty pleasure on Valentine's Day?
'Yeah, the guilt question …. It's one that always works,' said Van Besien, the fair trade expert. 'We could not survive if we would be thinking about these things all the time,' arguing that legislation should trump consumer emotions.
'We should have laws that make buying cocoa below the cost of the production something illegal. And it should not be up to the consumer to make this decision,' he said. Both de Selliers and Persoone hope that if the prices drop down again, they stay around the $5,000 or $6,000 mark.
'I really, really hope the money goes to the farmers,' Persoone said.
So in the meantime, despite the price hikes, the chocolate shouldn't leave too bitter a taste.
'It's a small luxury that most people still can afford,' Persoone said. 'I hope it stays like this.'

Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Asian shares climb after China and the US say they have a framework for seeking a trade deal
Asian shares climb after China and the US say they have a framework for seeking a trade deal

San Francisco Chronicle​

timean hour ago

  • San Francisco Chronicle​

Asian shares climb after China and the US say they have a framework for seeking a trade deal

TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares mostly rose Wednesday after China and the U.S. said they had agreed on a framework for following up on the trade truce reached last month in Geneva. U.S. futures fell while oil prices edged higher. Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 surged 0.6% in afternoon trading to 38,450.76. Data from the Bank of Japan data showed wholesale inflation slowed in May, meaning there might be less pressure for the central bank to raise interest rates in its next policy board meeting. Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 0.9% to 24,381.39, while the Shanghai Composite rose 0.5% to 3,402.97. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 edged up 0.2% to 8,603.70. South Korea's Kospi added 1.0% to 2,900.05. Tuesday on Wall Street, the S&P 500 rose 0.5% to 6,038.81 as the trade talks between the world's two largest economies carried into a second day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.2% to 42,866.87, and the Nasdaq composite gained 0.6% to 19,714.99. Stocks have roared higher since dropping roughly 20% below their record two months ago, when President Donald Trump shocked financial markets with his announcement of tariffs that were so stiff that they raised worries about a possible recession. Much of the rally has been due to hopes that Trump would lower his tariffs after reaching trade deals with countries around the world, and the S&P 500 is back within 1.7% of its record set in February. Analysts said that after two days of discussion in London, the late-night agreement reached appeared to be a consensus on what was already agreed upon before. Even so, Trump's approval is still needed. 'So what did 48 hours of talks actually produce? Apparently, a reaffirmation to eventually do what they had already said they would do. If markets were expecting substance, they got process instead,' said Stephen Innes, managing partner at SPI Asset Management. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said Tuesday evening in London that talks with China were going 'really, really well.' Both the United States and China have put many of their tariffs on each other's exports on pause as talks continue. Still, uncertainty over what is to come is still affecting companies and their ability to make profits. Designer Brands, the company behind the DSW shoe store chain, became the latest U.S. company to yank its financial forecasts for 2025 because of 'uncertainty stemming primarily from global trade policies.' The company, which also owns the Keds, Jessica Simpson and other shoe brands, reported a larger loss for the start of the year than analysts were expecting, and its revenue also fell short of forecasts. CEO Doug Howe pointed to 'persistent instability and pressure on consumer discretionary' spending, and the company's stock tumbled 18.2%. The uncertainty is moving in both directions, to be sure. A survey released Tuesday of optimism among small U.S. businesses improved a bit in May. 'While the economy will continue to stumble along until the major sources of uncertainty are resolved, owners reported more positive expectations on business conditions and sales growth,' according to Bill Dunkelberg, chief economist at the National Federation of Independent Business. Tesla helped to make up for such losses by rising 5.7%. The electric vehicle company has been recovering since tumbling last week as Elon Musk's relationship with Trump imploded. That raised fear about possible retaliation by the U.S. government against Tesla. Shares that trade in the United States of chipmaking giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. rose 2.6% after the company known as TSMC said its revenue in May jumped nearly 40% from the year earlier.

Top Asian News 5:42 a.m. GMT
Top Asian News 5:42 a.m. GMT

Yahoo

timean hour ago

  • Yahoo

Top Asian News 5:42 a.m. GMT

The US and China say they have agreed on a framework to resolve their trade disputes LONDON (AP) — Senior U.S. and Chinese negotiators have agreed on a framework to get their trade negotiations back on track after a series of disputes that threatened to derail them, both sides have said. The announcement came at the end of two days of talks in the British capital that wrapped up late Tuesday. The meetings appeared to focus on finding a way to resolve disputes over mineral and technology exports that had shaken a fragile truce on trade reached in Geneva last month. It's not clear whether any progress was made on the more fundamental differences over China's sizeable trade surplus with the United States.

Asia shares climb after China and the US say they have a framework for seeking a trade deal
Asia shares climb after China and the US say they have a framework for seeking a trade deal

The Hill

time3 hours ago

  • The Hill

Asia shares climb after China and the US say they have a framework for seeking a trade deal

TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares mostly rose Wednesday after China and the U.S. said they had reached agreement on a framework for following up on the trade truce reached last month in Geneva. Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 surged 0.5% in morning trading to 38,385.37. Data from the Bank of Japan data showed wholesale inflation slowed in May, meaning there might be less pressure for the central bank to raise interest rates in its next policy board meeting. Hong Kong's Hang Seng gained 0.8% to 24,364.77, while the Shanghai Composite rose 0.5% to 3,402.72. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 edged up 0.3% to 8,612.40. South Korea's Kospi added 0.6% to 2,889.88. Tuesday on Wall Street, the S&P 500 rose 0.5% to 6,038.81 as the trade talks between the world's two largest economies carried into a second day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.2% to 42,866.87, and the Nasdaq composite gained 0.6% to 19,714.99. Stocks have roared higher since dropping roughly 20% below their record two months ago, when President Donald Trump shocked financial markets with his announcement of tariffs that were so stiff that they raised worries about a possible recession. Much of the rally has been due to hopes that Trump would lower his tariffs after reaching trade deals with countries around the world, and the S&P 500 is back within 1.7% of its record set in February. Analysts said that after two days of discussion in London, the late-night agreement reached appeared to be a consensus on what was already agreed upon before. 'So what did 48 hours of talks actually produce? Apparently, a reaffirmation to eventually do what they had already said they would do. If markets were expecting substance, they got process instead,' said Stephen Innes, managing partner at SPI Asset Management. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said Tuesday evening in London that talks with China were going 'really, really well.' Both the United States and China have put many of their tariffs announced against each other on pause as talks continue. Even though many tariffs are on hold for the moment, uncertainty over what is to come is still affecting companies and their ability to make profits. Designer Brands, the company behind the DSW shoe store chain, became the latest U.S. company to yank its financial forecasts for 2025 because of 'uncertainty stemming primarily from global trade policies.' The company, which also owns the Keds, Jessica Simpson and other shoe brands, reported a larger loss for the start of the year than analysts were expecting, and its revenue also fell short of forecasts. CEO Doug Howe pointed to 'persistent instability and pressure on consumer discretionary' spending, and the company's stock tumbled 18.2%. The uncertainty is moving in both directions, to be sure. A survey released Tuesday of optimism among small U.S. businesses improved a bit in May. 'While the economy will continue to stumble along until the major sources of uncertainty are resolved, owners reported more positive expectations on business conditions and sales growth,' according to Bill Dunkelberg, chief economist at the National Federation of Independent Business. Tesla helped to make up for such losses by rising 5.7%. The electric vehicle company has been recovering since tumbling last week as Elon Musk's relationship with Trump imploded. That raised fear about possible retaliation by the U.S. government against Tesla. Shares that trade in the United States of chipmaking giant Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. rose 2.6% after the company known as TSMC said its revenue in May jumped nearly 40% from the year earlier. In other dealings early Wednesday, the yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.48% from 4.47% late Tuesday. Benchmark U.S. crude oil slipped 12 cents to $64.86 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, fell 15 cents to $66.72 a barrel. The U.S. dollar rose to 144.94 Japanese yen from 144.84 yen. The euro cost $1.1414, down from $1.1425. ___ AP Business Writer Stan Choe contributed.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into the world of global news and events? Download our app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store