Americans are buying less Halloween chocolate. Ghana's cocoa farmers took their cut months ago

Halloween candy sales in the United States were down 6.7% in the month to 17 October compared with last year, according to NielsenIQ data reported by AP. In mid-September they were down 11.7%. The reason given is simple: chocolate is too expensive. US government data shows candy and gum prices are up 44% over five years.

That should be strange, because cocoa itself is much cheaper than it was.

The world price fell. The chocolate price didn't.

Cocoa hit a record of about $10,710 a tonne in January 2025. By March 2026 it had fallen to around $3,241, roughly 70% off the peak. It now trades at around $5,800.

Big chocolate makers buy their cocoa months or years ahead, a practice called hedging. Hershey says in its filings that it hedges three to 24 months out. So much of the chocolate on US shelves this Halloween was made with cocoa bought near the top of the market. In February 2026, Mondelez, the company behind Cadbury and Oreo, said it had no immediate plans to cut prices in North America.

Ghana's farmers felt the drop at once

Ghana moved much faster, and in the other direction. In October 2025, the government set the 2025/26 farmgate price at ₵58,000 a tonne, or ₵3,625 a bag. On 12 February 2026 it cut that to ₵41,392 a tonne, ₵2,587 a bag. That is ₵1,038 less for every bag.

The government gave three reasons: the world price had fallen from about $7,200 to $4,100, Ghana's cocoa was uncompetitive at the old price, and the Cocoa Board did not have the money to buy and hold the crop. A Minority MP, Kennedy Nyarko Osei of Akim Swedru, said the Cocoa Board had chosen not to sell about 300,000 tonnes in December 2025, when prices were higher. Farmers in the Western North marched with "Restore Our Price Now" placards, and farmers in Kadjebi said they had not been paid for beans bought since November 2025.

The 2026/27 price, in force from 25 September 2026, is ₵42,400 a tonne, or ₵2,650 a bag. That is ₵63 a bag more than the February price, and still nearly ₵1,000 below where the 2025/26 season started.

A 2026 law, Act 1182, says farmers must get at least 70% of the gross export price. The Cocoa Board says the new price is 71.18%, but it did not publish the world price or the exchange rate it used to work that out.

For years, studies have put the cocoa farmer's share of a chocolate bar at around 6%.