Early 2024 saw global cocoa and chocolate prices more than doubling over 2023, but with seemingly little benefit to poor farmers in Ghana. A complex set of factors seemingly drove the increases, including inflation in the cost of inputs and increased global demand for chocolate, especially in Europe and Asia. Crop disease had led the Ghana government to start a rehabilitation project that cut down some 40% of the cocoa trees. Smuggling cocoa to Cote d’Ivoire in search of higher prices hampered Ghana’s production, as did switching to illegal mining (known as galamsey). Further, the government signed a forward contract to sell 800,000 tons of cocoa at a price of around $2,500 per metric ton, while global prices later soared to over $12,000. Ghana could only provide some 500,000 tons. Longer term concerns include climate change in the two largest producing nations of Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana. Some experts predicted that global warming may make it impossible to grow cocoa in West Africa by 2050. For Ghana’s impoverished cocoa farmers, the question was simple: “Will the lot of cocoa farmers improve as global prices escalate?”