'Small Luxury' for Valentine's Day Doesn't Have Small Price Tag

Valentine's chocolates always seek to show how deep your love is. This year, it may also show how deep your pockets are. With the price of cocoa beans setting unprecedented records on the commodities market, it will certainly turn the gift of love into a bigger financial commitment than it once was.

• Price spike: "The price increase of cocoa is absolutely spectacular, [going on] 2 1/2 years," says Philippe de Selliers, the head of both Leonidas and Belgian chocolate federation Choprabisco. It stood at less than $2,000 a ton in the summer of 2022, but it took off last year and peaked at well over $12,000 during the Christmas season and has been hovering around $10,000 since, per the AP. "We are seeing unprecedented prices. They haven't been this high for the last 50 years," says Bart Van Besien, policy adviser for the Oxfam Fair Trade group.

• 'Chocolate gourmet country': The impact can be felt deep in Belgium, which claims some 280 chocolate companies. Some of those companies close for Valentine's Day, per Dominque Persoone, owner of the famed Chocolate Line brand based in Brugge, turning one of the few financial bonanzas of the year into a forced vacation in the hopes that Easter will bring better tidings. Many chocolatiers can't go for the usual profit margins and end up turning all of the extra costs of cocoa prices over to their customers. Persoone says his chocolates increased in price by 20% over the last year alone, while de Selliers says it varies from producer to producer.
• Perfect chocolate storm: The shock of cocoa prices is pretty much a metaphorical perfect storm, mixing climate, disease, commodity speculation, the plight of farmers, and social ascendency around the world into one heady mix. "The drop that has happened now in production was directly linked to climate change," says Van Besien, blaming changes in annual rain and drought patterns in western Africa that weakened the sensitive trees in key production areas. Compounded by temperature shifts and disease, too many harvests failed.
• Chocolate love within reach: In the meantime, despite the price hikes, chocolate shouldn't leave too bitter a taste. "It's a small luxury that most people still can afford," Persoone says. "I hope it stays like this." More here.

(More Valentine's Day stories.)