The team at Radio 4’s Today programme got an enormous stiffy on this scoop by the BBC’s climate change team. It seems that climate change has caused bad weather in parts of West Africa which has sent cocoa prices surging and so makes your chocolate bars more expensive. It sounds like a great tale except that it is bollocks.
Yes cocoa prices are at an all time high of $8618 a tonne. The excellent website TradingEconomics.com which has all sorts of commodities data says that this is not down to global warming/climate change but:
Cocoa futures resumed their upward trend to breach 8,400 per pound, a new historic high, due to lingering concerns about tight cocoa supplies from West Africa. Dealers said that the market experienced some panic due to recent reports indicating that certain cocoa plants in Ivory Coast and Ghana have either halted or reduced processing activities because they could not afford to buy beans.
The long term data tells a fascinating tale. Back in 1999, twenty five years ago, cocoa was $1411 a tonne. So it has raced ahead by 511%. In 1969 fifty five years ago it was $756 a tonne so it has gained 994% since then.
That sounds great but then let’s look at gold. It is now $2207 oz. Twenty five years ago it was $235 and fifty five years ago it was $52.9 meaning it is up by 839% and 4072% respectively. What that tells you is that paper money, fiat, has been debased by Governments printing more and more of the stuff to fund their profligacy. God is not printing any more gold so it retains its value while paper, even the mighty dollar, loses purchasing power whether it is buying cocoa or cocoa seeds. And if the farmers can buy less of the former there will be less of the latter produced.
Maybe the BBC also thinks that global warming, not the money printing which is staff are always so keen to champion, has pushed gold to a record high as well?