Cocoa Price History: Monthly Global Price in USD per Tonne Since 1992

Cocoa is the core agricultural input behind the global chocolate industry, and its price is among the most geographically concentrated of any major commodity: the Ivory Coast and Ghana alone account for roughly 60% of world supply. This dataset tracks the IMF Primary Commodity Prices series for cocoa beans, published monthly in US dollars per metric ton and distributed via FRED under the code PCOCOUSDM, with continuous coverage since 1992. It is a clean reference for food-inflation analysis, soft-commodity research, and the study of weather- and disease-driven supply shocks.

Dataset: Cocoa Price (1992–2026) · Updated 2026-03-01

Source: IMF Primary Commodity Prices · International Monetary Fund (via FRED)

Macro Takeaway

Dataset Overview

Dataset Variables

The CSV and Excel files contain the following columns. Each row represents one calendar month.

Column names match the CSV headers exactly.

Download the Complete Dataset

The full dataset is available in CSV and Excel formats — monthly observations covering more than three decades.

FRED Direct CSV Access

The underlying data is published in the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) database under the series code PCOCOUSDM, sourced from the IMF Primary Commodity Prices dataset:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.csv?id=PCOCOUSDM

The Eco3min dataset mirrors the same monthly cocoa series, but packages it in a stable, versionable CSV with consistent column names — designed for direct ingestion in Python, R, or any data pipeline. The URL never changes, making it suitable for automated scripts.

Direct CSV Access — Eco3min Structured Dataset

https://eco3min.fr/dataset/cocoa-price.csv

This URL returns the complete dataset in CSV format. It can be used directly in pandas, R, curl, or any data tool.

Using the Dataset in Python

import pandas as pd

url = "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/cocoa-price.csv"
df = pd.read_csv(url, parse_dates=["date"])

# Display first rows
print(df.head())

# Basic statistics
print(df["cocoa_price"].describe())

# Plot
df.plot(x="date", y="cocoa_price", title="Cocoa Price (USD/t)", legend=False)

Using the Dataset in R

library(readr)

url <- "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/cocoa-price.csv"
df <- read_csv(url)

head(df)
summary(df$cocoa_price)

Both examples load the dataset directly from the URL — no download or API key required.

Methodology

The series reports the IMF Primary Commodity Prices benchmark for cocoa beans, expressed in US dollars per metric ton. The IMF price is constructed from the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO) daily price, itself an average of the nearest three active futures contracts traded on the London (ICE Futures Europe) and New York (ICE Futures U.S.) exchanges. This makes the series a physical-market reference rather than a single exchange quote.

Values are monthly averages, which smooth the intra-month swings visible in daily futures. The series begins in 1992; the all-time futures record of roughly $5,104 per ton set in 1977 predates this dataset and is referenced for historical context only.

This dataset is updated monthly via an automated pull from the FRED API (series PCOCOUSDM) by an Eco3min pipeline running on GitHub Actions, which regenerates the cleaned CSV and Excel files and refreshes the page metadata.

Data Quality & Provider Notes

Cocoa is one of the most actively traded soft commodities, and the IMF/ICCO benchmark is a widely cited physical-market reference. A few provider-specific points matter when using this series.

• Release latency. The IMF publishes Primary Commodity Prices monthly, typically in the first week of the following month. FRED ingests the update shortly after, and Eco3min mirrors it with a monthly pull. The series is therefore not a real-time price.
• Monthly average vs futures spot. This series is a monthly average of the ICCO daily price. It will differ from any single ICE futures settlement — including the headline December 2024 futures peak near $12,900 per ton, which a monthly average necessarily understates.
• Revisions. Cocoa prices are market-derived and not subject to the vintage revisions of survey-based macro series, though the IMF can restate recent observations.
• Alternative sources. ICCO daily prices (icco.org), ICE cocoa futures (London and New York), and Trading Economics provide higher-frequency or contract-specific quotes. Note that US futures are sometimes quoted per ton and London futures in pounds sterling per ton.

Common Pitfalls When Using This Series

1. Confusing nominal and real prices. This series is nominal. Comparing a 1992 reading to a 2024 reading without adjusting for the cumulative food-price and general inflation of the period overstates the real change. Deflating by CPI gives the true purchasing-power move.
2. Reading the monthly average as a market price. Headlines quote ICE futures; this dataset reports the monthly IMF/ICCO average. The two diverge most during fast-moving rallies, where the average lags the intraday extremes.
3. Treating recent extremes as a new baseline. A move from a multi-decade range into record territory, as in 2024, is unusual against the full distribution. Z-scores against a rolling window are more informative than absolute levels measured against recent memory.

Historical Regimes

1992–2000 — Post-liberalisation glut. Following the dismantling of the international cocoa buffer-stock and quota arrangements, abundant supply kept prices depressed, frequently below $1,800 per ton. Producing countries deregulated marketing boards under structural-adjustment programmes, weakening price support.

2001–2010 — Ivorian instability and gradual recovery. Civil conflict in the Ivory Coast, the world’s largest producer, introduced a persistent risk premium. Prices climbed irregularly through the $2,000–3,000 per ton range as supply security became a recurring concern.

2011–2016 — Elevated range. Strong grinding demand from emerging-market chocolate consumption met constrained West African output, holding prices in a higher band, roughly $2,500–3,300 per ton.

2017–2023 — Underinvestment plateau. Prices settled into a lower range near $2,000–2,600 per ton even as plantations aged and replanting lagged — a structural fragility that set the stage for the next shock.

2024 — Supply-shock supercycle. Swollen-shoot and black-pod disease, ageing trees, and adverse weather across the Ivory Coast and Ghana drove a multi-season deficit. Cocoa broke its 1977 all-time high of about $5,104 per ton, with ICE futures peaking near $12,900 per ton in December 2024 — the most extreme move in the commodity’s modern history.

2025–2026 — Correction and surplus. Recovering West African output and a projected global surplus pulled prices sharply lower, with futures trading back toward $3,100 per ton by early 2026, still above the pre-2023 norm.

Related Macroeconomic Datasets

Commodity Price Hub

This dataset is part of the Eco3min commodity price repository — energy, metals, agricultural softs, and grains, all sourced from IMF Primary Commodity Prices via FRED.

Explore the Commodity Price Hub

Sources

• International Monetary Fund — Primary Commodity Prices, Global Price of Cocoa Beans
• Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — FRED database, series PCOCOUSDM
• International Cocoa Organization (ICCO) — daily cocoa price basis underlying the IMF series

Dataset Reference

Eco3min Research. (2026). Cocoa Price — Global Monthly Price in USD per Metric Ton (1992-2026). Source: IMF Primary Commodity Prices via FRED.<br> https://eco3min.fr/en/cocoa-price-history-dataset/