Brazil suspended Ivorian cocoa — which supplied almost everything

Through May 2026, Brazil imported $132.1 M worth of whole or broken cocoa beans. Côte d'Ivoire supplied 99.96% of that total. Four countries appear in MDIC ComexStat records — but in practice the corridor operated as a single-supplier monopoly.

How a concentration becomes a crisis

Côte d'Ivoire is the world's #1 cocoa producer, and Brazil's sourcing logic has long orbited around it. What changed in 2026 was the scale of the risk made visible. A multi-year run of crop deficits, swollen-shoot disease and black pod rot devastated Ivorian plantations from 2023 onward, driving global cocoa prices to record highs in 2024-2025. Then, on February 26, 2026, Brazil's Ministry of Agriculture (MAPA) suspended imports of fermented and dried cocoa beans from Côte d'Ivoire on phytosanitary grounds — pest and disease quarantine risk. The block is regulatory, not commercial. The practical effect is the same.

What an HHI of 0.999 means

The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index for Brazil's cocoa bean imports reached 0.999 in this period — a theoretical maximum of 1.0. Industrial-organization literature flags markets above 0.25 as highly concentrated. Brazil was nearly four times that. With only four active partners and one supplying almost all volume, any supply disruption — phytosanitary, climatic or logistical — transmits directly into domestic shortages for the chocolate processing industry.

Brazil is not a major cocoa grower. Bahia and Pará account for most domestic output, but that supply falls well short of what the processing sector needs. The country's dependence on imported beans is structural, and Côte d'Ivoire was filling that gap almost entirely.

Alternative routes — and why they take time

Ghana is the second-largest African producer and the natural substitute. Ecuador and Peru offer fine-flavor cocoa — a different grade from standard Ivorian beans — and could cover part of the volume if MAPA clears phytosanitary certifications for those origins. Indonesia, the world's third-largest producer, has the scale but more variable quality.

The obstacle is not the existence of alternatives. It is the timeline. Opening a new agricultural import corridor in Brazil requires pest-risk analysis, on-site inspections and, typically, a bilateral protocol negotiated between MAPA and the exporting country's authority. That process rarely takes less than 12 months.

The global cocoa market is still digesting multi-year supply deficits. Switching origin under those conditions is not just a regulatory challenge — it is a price and availability challenge simultaneously.