Soaring cacao prices over the last three years are fueling deforestation and conflict in Grand Gedeh county of Liberia, in West Africa, Mongabay staff writer Ashoka Mukpo reported. Satellite imagery by Global Forest Watch indicates that forest loss in and around Grand Gedeh, which borders the neighboring nation of Côte d’Ivoire in southeastern Liberia, has spiked dramatically since the beginning of 2025. The price of cacao rose from $2.30 per kilogram ($1.04 per pound) in 2022 to $7 ($3.18 per pound) in October 2025. That’s a drop in price from the early 2025 peak price of $10.73 per kilo ($4.88 per pound). The dramatic spike in value has fueled a migration of cacao workers from Côte d’Ivoire into Liberia. Nearly 50,000 rural workers have moved to Grand Gedeh, many with experience in the cacao industry. These migrants now make up more than 20% of the county’s population, which was around 217,000 in 2022. “Some of our friends who came to Liberia earlier called us and we saw messages on our phones,” one migrant worker from Cote d’Ivoire told Mukpo. “They told us that the forest is open in Grand Gedeh, so that’s how we started coming to Liberia.” Community leaders and local elites are reportedly offering these migrant workers 20-300 hectares (50-740 acres) of land to set up cacao plantations. Landowners keep 60% of the proceeds from cacao, while the workers take 40%. “The situation is alarming. They are really destroying the forest on a massive scale,” Yei Neagor, an…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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