The cocoa production ranking is one of the most lopsided in world agriculture. Ivory Coast grows about 1.89 million tonnes. Indonesia, Ghana and Ecuador — second, third and fourth — total roughly 1.57 million between them.
Add Ghana to Ivory Coast and two neighbouring West African countries account for well over half of global supply.
What concentration does to a market
In most agricultural commodities a bad year somewhere is absorbed elsewhere. Cocoa has no such cushion. A drought, a disease outbreak or a bad harmattan season across southern Ivory Coast and Ghana hits the majority of world supply simultaneously, and there is no other region with the capacity to make up the difference.
This is the mechanism behind cocoa's reputation for violent price moves. When the crop fails in West Africa, prices do not drift upward — they can double, because buyers are bidding for a supply that physically is not there.
It also means chocolate manufacturers, who are mostly European and North American, depend on the agricultural conditions and the political stability of two countries in a way few consumers ever consider.
Growth, and where it did not happen
Ivory Coast more than doubled output since 1990, from about 808,000 tonnes to 1.89 million. Indonesia grew more than fourfold, Ecuador more than tripled, and Peru rose from a base so small the percentage is close to meaningless.
Ghana grew about 81 per cent — real, but slower than its neighbour, and the gap between the two has widened considerably over the period.
Ecuador and Peru are worth separating out. Both grew fast, but largely in fine-flavour varieties that sell into the premium and single-origin market rather than competing with the bulk West African crop. They are expanding in a different business that happens to share a crop name.
The part the tonnage hides
Cocoa is the clearest example in agriculture of value sitting almost entirely outside the country that grows it. The beans are a commodity; the margin is in processing, branding and retail, which happen elsewhere. Estimates of the share of a chocolate bar's final price reaching the farmer vary, but every credible estimate is a small single-digit percentage.
Both governments have tried to change this — through a joint floor price on exports, and by attempting to build domestic grinding capacity so more processing happens before the beans leave. Progress has been limited, for the ordinary reason that the buyers have more negotiating power than the sellers.
Two further pressures do not appear in the numbers. Much of West African cocoa comes from ageing trees on smallholdings, planted decades ago and past their most productive years. And a significant share of the land was cleared from forest, which now runs into European deforestation regulations that will require traceability the current supply chain was never built to provide.
The chart shows a production ranking. The industry it describes is far less stable than the numbers suggest.