Global: Why the prices of sugar and cocoa products are soaring

Not all raw materials have seen their prices fall in recent months. Quite the contrary. The ton of cocoa thus reached its highest level in 44 years on Monday. Record which doesn't mean much since a dollar from 1979 is equivalent to more than four dollars today. On the other hand, the brutality of the rise in prices over the past year is striking: +61%. The surge in sugar prices on the world market is just as spectacular. It reached 52% over one year. And prices have reached, again, unprecedented levels since the beginning of the 2010s. In Brazil, part of the sugar cane production was used to power cars How do we explain these outbreaks? On the cocoa side, there is the juxtaposition of a continued increase in demand - there are more chocolate lovers around the world every year - and a production that is not able to keep up. The rainy season in West Africa was so intense that the cocoa trees lost some of their flowers and were more often sick. For sugar, the explanation lies above ...