Photos: Chocolate prices to keep rising as West Africa's cocoa crisis deepens

Sections of a cocoa plantation, destroyed by illegal gold mining activities. Last year, nearly 6,000 cocoa trees covered a 27-hectare plot in western Ghana. Today, less than a dozen remain.

Cocoa beans are sun-dried outside a warehouse. Long the world's undisputed cocoa powerhouses accounting for over 60 per cent of global supply, Ghana and Ivory Coast face catastrophic harvests this season.

A small quantity of sun-dried cocoa beans. Expectations of shortages of cocoa beans - the raw material for chocolate - have seen New York cocoa futures more than double this year alone.

A cocoa plantation destroyed by illegal gold mining activities. More than 20 farmers, experts, and industry said that rampant illegal gold mining, climate change, sector mismanagement, and rapidly spreading disease are to blame.

Ghana's cocoa marketing board, Cocobod, estimates that 590,000 hectares of plantations have been infected with swollen shoot, a virus that will ultimately kill them.

A view of a nursery, where hybrid cocoa seedlings are grown. Ghana today has some 1.38 million hectares of land under cocoa cultivation, a figure Cocobod said includes infected trees that are still producing cocoa.

Since chocolate makers tend to hedge cocoa purchases months in advance, analysts say the disastrous crops in West Africa will only really hit consumers later this year.

A section of a cocoa plantation destroyed by illegal gold mining activities. Across Ghana, cocoa plantations are ceding ground to gold miners, known locally as galamsey. Cocobod said it doesn't have up-to-date data on the scale of the destruction.

Cocobod, which is responsible for regulating and promoting the sector, faces mounting debt. This season, it struggled to secure its syndicated loan to finance operations and bring in the crop.

It suspended the distribution of fertiliser and pesticides years ago. Plans to rejuvenate ageing tree stocks have made scant progress. And it is losing the battle against what many consider an existential threat: swollen shoot.

A field worker identifies cocoa trees affected by swollen shoot disease. The virus first reduces yields before ultimately killing trees. Once infected with swollen shoot, plantations must be ripped out and the soil treated before cocoa can be replanted.

Cocobod has undertaken to rehabilitate affected cocoa plantations, using a portion of its $600 million in financing from the African Development Bank and another $200 million from the World Bank.

Things are hardly better in Ivory Coast, the world's biggest cocoa producer. Tropical Research Service's Wateridge estimates that up to 30 per cent of Ivorian cocoa plantations are likely infected.

A cocoa pod grows on a farm in Ghana. Even after rehabilitation, replanted trees take two to four years to mature and produce beans. And a significant rebound in cocoa production in the two nations faces other major headwinds.

With West Africa struggling, current sky-high global prices will be an attractive incentive for farmers to plant more cocoa in other tropical regions, notably Latin America.

Both VOICE Network's Fountain and cocoa expert Wateridge forecast that Ecuador will overtake Ghana as the world's number two cocoa producer by 2027. Brazil and Peru could also step up.