Chocolates always have their honor of Valentine’s best accompanied by a bouquet. But for anyone who wants to get chocolates this year because of the day he should put his hand deep in his pocket.

At the price of cocoa grains, the main ingredient of chocolate setting an unprecedented record on the market, the simple gesture could cause a headache for some who may think about it twice before they do it.

Valentine’s chocolate

“The increase in cocoa price is completely spectacular, now for 2, 2 ½ years,” said Philippe de Sellier, head of both Leonidas and the Belgian Choprabisco Chocolate Federation. In the summer of 2022 the price of cocoa was less than $ 2,000 per tonne. He culminated in $ 12,000 during the Christmas season and has since been around the $ 10,000.

“We see unprecedented prices. It was not so high in the last 50 years, “said Bart Van Besien, Oxfam’s fair trade adviser. And the impact can be deeply felt in the gourmet country of chocolate, Belgium, where some of the 280 chocolate companies bleed in Valentine’s week.

Dominque Persoone, owner of the famous Chocolate Line brand, still has many grains 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 have real problems, because the price is very high,” he said. “If you don’t have good contacts, they just don’t hand over.”

Some are forced to close for Valentine, he said, and are forced to be as profitable in other cases, having a forced vacation, hoping that Easter, with its eggs and bunnies, will have better news.

Many chocolates cannot go for the usual profit margins and carry all the extra cost of cocoa prices to their customers. Persoone said its chocolates increased by price 20% in the last year, while De selliers said it depends on producer to producer.

The perfect chocolate storm

The shock of cocoa prices is almost a metaphorical storm that comes from a combination of factors, climate, diseases, speculation for goods, suffering of farmers and social rise around the world.

“The decline that has now happened in production was directly linked to climate change,” Van Besien said. Persoone also said that the temperature differences between night and day increased in the small strip of land around Ecuador, where trees can thrive. Combined with diseases, the harvest was not expected.

At the same time around the world, populations came out of poverty, the middle classes expanded to places such as China and the longing for a chocolate delicacy increased.

De selliers said that “60% of cocoa comes from the Ctlie Coast and Ghana and these farmers have to get a better life. It’s extremely important. “

Persoone agreed: “We didn’t pay enough to have a good price for farmers.”

Thus, paradoxically, the low prices then help to cause high prices now.

Both De Selliers and Persoone hope that if prices fall again, they will remain around $ 5,000 or $ 6,000.

“I really hope the money goes to farmers,” Persoone said. “It’s a little luxury that most people still be able to afford it,” Persoone said. “I hope it stays like that.”