Cocoa bean harvests in key producer nations are increasingly under threat by the climate crisis, new data shows, which is only likely to push up the price of chocolate.
The risks to crops related to extreme heat have been steadily increasing over the past two decades in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Ecuador, and Indonesia, according to modelling shared exclusively with The Independent from ClimateAi, a California-based machine learning company that models harvest outcomes. And that impact is only set to get worse as global temperatures increase.
“Cocoa is an interesting crop because it is concentrated in a few places, which increases the potential for instability in the market, whether due to weather or other risks,” David Farnham, senior director of data science at ClimateAi, told The Independent. “In Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, markets that represent around half of the global cocoa crop, there is clearly a strong upward trend in the risks associated with extreme heat,” he added.
Last year was the warmest year on record globally and the first calendar year that the average global temperature exceeded 1.5°C above its pre-industrial level. That is only sue to increase, upping the risk of extreme heat and erratic rainfall in cocoa-growing nations as the increasing temperatures make extreme weather events more likely. This poses a threat to cocoa yields and quality.
The latest version of ClimateAi’s machine learning technology has only been around for the last few months, and has been specifically designed to create accurate outlooks for more data-scarce environments like Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, according to Farnham.
“The technology leverages all the data currently exists, including historic weather data and satellite data, soil type and elevation data, and also embeds local agricultural knowledge into the algorithm,” Farnham said.
Even without the impact of the climate crisis, cocoa is a slow, land-intensive crop, taking an entire year for a tree to produce the cocoa needed in just 200 grams of chocolate.
With demand for cocoa increasing globally, cocoa farmers are clearing tropical forests to plant new trees, with experts estimating that 70% of the Côte d’Ivoire’s illegal deforestation is related to cocoa farming: a practice that threatens the country’s last few hundred elephants.
Yields are also decreasing due to the climate crisis, with a farming co-operative from Côte d’Ivoire detailing how production from its 5,000 cocoa producers has dropped by 30 per cent in recent years, prompting many to turn to farming other commodities, such as rubber or palm.
“Climate change is strongly impacting the yield,” said Biabate Posseni, who helps to train cocoa farmers and monitor their practices. “When we wait for rain, rain doesn’t come, and when we need sun, there is no sun and instead we get a lot of rain.”
Posseni warned that the country’s entire cocoa crop could be threatened if current dynamics do not change.
“By 2030, if nothing is done, we won’t have any cocoa trees because, with climate change, all the cocoa trees will be destroyed,” he said.
“There really is a need to gather support so we can tackle it together and keep growing cocoa.”
The combination of squeezed supply and booming demand has driven cocoa prices to record levels over the past couple of years, reaching just under $11,000 per tonne in January this year.
That increase has been reflected in the prices paid by consumers, with the latest Office for National Statistics data suggesting that UK chocolate prices have increased by almost half in just three years.
The figures show chocolate price inflation is increasing, rising from 9.8 per cent last Easter compared to Easter 2023 to 13.6 per cent this year on Easter 2024.
In March, UK consumer watchdog Which? found that Easter eggs have gone up in price by as much as 50% on last year while shrinking in size.
A spokesperson for Nestle UK, the manufacturer of chocolate bars including Aero and KitKat, confirmed to The Independent that adapting to the impacts of the climate crisis is an important component to the country’s future planning.
The spokesperson added the increasing cost of cocoa has made it “much more expensive to manufacture our products” with the company responding by sometimes making adjustments to the price or weight of chocolate bars.
For the roughly two million cocoa farmers in West Africa, the soaring price of cocoa has mostly not been reflected in wages.
Up to 90 per cent of Ghanaian cocoa farmers do not earn a living wage, according to Oxfam, while many of the 800,000 smallholder farmers who cultivate the cocoa crop live on less than $2 a day.
Reduced yields and rising farming costs are also preventing farmers from investing in more climate-resilient farming practices, according to some reports, potentially compounding problems in the future.
In September 2024, the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), which controls salaries for the country’s cocoa farmers, announced that it would raise the amount it pays cocoa farmers by 45 per cent, Bloomberg reported.
The Ghana Civil society-backed Cocoa Platform (GCCP), meanwhile, had been pushing, at a minimum, for wages to increase by 65 per cent to70 per cent.
David Attenborough to release landmark feature film, Ocean, to mark 99th birthday
Australian PM contender’s run unravels over climate crisis question
The climate crisis truth that Trump’s re-election helped expose
Chinese company announces another huge advance in EV battery technology
Why hundreds of koalas are being shot dead from helicopters in Australia
Wildfires grow to hundreds of acres after North Carolina lifts burn ban
