Bad weather and crop disease (the swollen cocoa sprout virus) prevent cocoa from growing in Ghana, the second largest producer in the world, forcing processors to import beans at higher rates than usual, sources familiar with this issue told Reuters.

The outbreak that destroys cocoa tree disease and drought, which has reduced the size of beans, has led trading houses to lower their Ghana production estimates to 800,000-850,000 tons compared with earlier crop forecasts of 900,000 tons.

“It's hard to predict, but it's no secret that mid-year crops will be bad,” a source at Cocobod, a cocoa regulator in Ghana, told Reuters. Due to reduced supplies, processors turned to bean suppliers from the neighboring and largest producer, Côte d'Ivoire.

Given their relative scarcity, Ghanaian beans have become more expensive on the international market.

Cacao edema virus is a plant pathogenic virus of the Caulimoviridae family that attacks mainly cocoa trees, which reduces cocoa yield during the first year of the lesion and usually kills the tree within a few years.

Although farmers can uproot infected trees and replace them with virus-resistant seedlings, transplanting can be expensive and farmers will not earn money by waiting for the seedlings to grow into fruiting trees.