Speaking after an emergency meeting held by members of the group after a dramatic fall in prices, ICCO’s chairman Luis Valverde told reporters in Adidjan, Cote d'Ivoire's commercial capital, that the cocoa industry was now in a state of emergency.

"We are in a crisis, in a price crisis," he said. "The last six months have been terrible, and the forecast is even worse."

Cocoa futures in New York have plunged more than 40 percent in the past year — their lowest in four years — amid a worldwide glut caused by bumper harvests in West Africa.

Valverde said growers in the cocoa industry were planning to coordinate production to control supply and would work together to solve the crisis.

"The number one point that we all agree is that all the decisions that we make regarding our production are not as they used to be," he said. "We cannot make sole decisions, we must make decisions as a group."

The plummeting prices have been hurting the finances of producing nations and the incomes of hundreds of thousands of small-scale farmers, according to Reuters.

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