Cocoa, coffee and olive oil: three products that are part of everyday life for many people have reached record prices in recent months. The development is particularly drastic for cocoa and coffee – both are currently breaking decades-old price records, as the NZZ writes. Within a year, the price of cocoa beans on the New York commodity exchange has tripled at times. In spring 2024, the price climbed from 4'000 to as much as 12'000 dollars per tonne. By way of comparison, in 2023 the price of cocoa was still at $3,200 per tonne. In previous years, the price fluctuated between $2,000 and $3,000.

Although there was a slight relaxation in the summer, the price rose again massively at the end of the year and is currently around 11'000 dollars per tonne. As SRF reports, there are two reasons why the powder is so expensive. Firstly, a virus that has affected the cocoa plants, particularly in the important cocoa-growing regions of West Africa, has caused major crop failures. At the same time, climate change is affecting cocoa production. As a result, supply was significantly lower than demand, causing the price to skyrocket. According to the managing director of the Swiss Platform for Sustainable Cocoa, the virus cannot (yet) be combated - the only option is to cut down the cocoa trees.

Rising demand for coffee

Coffee lovers will also have to get used to more expensive times. The prices for raw coffee have also reached record levels. While some see bad weather conditions in the most important coffee-producing countries – i.e. climate change – as the cause of the price increase, others blame the increased demand. As Migros writes, for example, consumption in emerging industrial nations such as China has increased enormously.

Modern breeding technologies could help here. In Italy, researchers have developed a more precise genome map of the Arabica coffee plant that should enable more resistant plants. Another possibility would be food from bioreactors. Initial trials have already been started at the ZHAW in Zurich, where sustainable chocolate has been produced in a tank. However, these innovations are still a long way off.

Pineapple juice is also affected by a significant price increase. Due to crop failures in the main producing countries such as Thailand, the Philippines and Costa Rica, the price of pineapple juice concentrate has risen to over 5,000 US dollars per tonne. These bottlenecks are due to extreme weather conditions such as drought and the El Niño climate phenomenon, which have led to a drastic reduction in harvest volumes.

Now olive oil bottles have to be chained

But it's not just cocoa, coffee and pineapples that are at record prices. The prices of olives and olive oil are also skyrocketing. In 2023, the olive harvest was poor in all European producing countries – and this had a massive impact on prices. In Spain, extreme drought and heat waves caused a slump, while in Italy heavy rainfall affected the harvest. But invasive organisms also endanger olive growing. One example is the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa (Xf), which the Federal Office for Agriculture describes as one of the most dangerous bacteria for plants worldwide. The bacterium uses olive trees as host plants, for example.

The extent of the price increase is staggering: According to the International Olive Oil Association, 100 kilograms of extra virgin olive oil cost the equivalent of 211 francs in 2019. At the end of June last year, the price was a whopping 750 francs. This was reported by the Swiss radio station SRF. According to the NZZ, there has been no similar price increase for any other food. In Italy and Spain, the situation is so dramatic that supermarkets are chaining their olive oil bottles together to protect them from theft.

But not only cases of theft, but also product counterfeiting have increased due to the rapid price increase. ‘Record fraud with olive oil,’ headlined the Tages Anzeiger last summer. In Italy in particular, fraud is common: for example, in July last year, 42 tonnes of falsely declared olive oil were seized. The goods, worth almost a million dollars, should have been sold as ‘extra vergine’, but were actually mixed with lower-quality or cheaper oil. In other cases, misleading labels of origin were used to suggest a higher quality. This development shows that the rarer and more expensive a product becomes, the higher the risk of counterfeiting.

But what is the solution for the rarity of olive oil? One alternative could be rapeseed. However, rapeseed cultivation in Europe is declining – partly because the approval of modern pesticides is once again being blocked.