Farmers across five cocoa-growing regions of Ghana remain unpaid for beans delivered as far back as November 2025, raising fresh alarm over the welfare of smallholder producers and the long-term stability of the country’s most important agricultural export.
A signed document by Yaw Dormacho, a Ghanaian citizen and son of a cocoa farmer from the Western North Region, addressed to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) and titled “The Cocoa Farmer’s Cry: A Nation’s Backbone Left to Break,” details the ongoing hardship facing producers in the Western, Western North, Ashanti, Eastern and Bono regions, describing the situation as six months of silence and six months of suffering.
The document comes at a critical juncture. The Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) has reportedly released GH¢3.62 billion toward clearing arrears, yet producers say the funds have not reached them. Licensed Buying Companies (LBCs) are said to collectively owe LBCs approximately US$10 billion for cocoa purchased since November 2025, with some remaining unpaid for two consecutive seasons. The gap between institutional disbursements and farmgate receipts remains a defining challenge of the current crisis.
Compounding the hardship, the Ministry of Finance on February 12, 2026 announced a reduction in the producer price from GH¢3,625 to GH¢2,587 per 62.5 kilogramme bag, a decrease of nearly 29 percent. The government attributed the cut to a sharp drop in global cocoa prices from an average of US$7,200 per tonne to approximately US$4,100 per tonne.
The Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference has described efforts to rescue the cocoa sector as a moral imperative, warning that delayed payments are generating unpaid labour, disrupted schooling, rising household debt, and deepening vulnerability in rural communities.
Structurally, the document points to a fundamental miscalculation in Ghana’s forward sales strategy. Historically, around 70 percent of cocoa was sold in advance to stabilise revenue. That proportion was reduced to around 30 percent in anticipation of higher global prices that ultimately did not materialise. COCOBOD is now grappling with total debt of GH¢32.91 billion, including a US$481 million loan obligation due within the 2025 to 2026 crop season.
Purchasing Clerks, the individuals who pre-finance cocoa purchases using borrowed funds, have absorbed especially severe losses following the producer price reduction. The document describes the outcome as a devastating erosion of capital for these vulnerable actors within the cocoa value chain.
Dormacho, writing in a personal capacity, draws on his own biography to ground the broader argument. His education was financed through his father’s cocoa income, and he argues that the crisis is not a matter of statistics but of human lives.
“The farmer did not design the forward sales strategy, nor negotiate contracts that were later defaulted upon. The farmer simply grew the cocoa and waited,” the document states.
More than one million smallholder farmers depend on cocoa for their livelihoods. The document calls for the immediate settlement of outstanding arrears, a formal review of the cocoa pricing model, and a renewed commitment from policymakers to treat cocoa farmers as partners in national development rather than as shock absorbers for systemic failures.
