Climate change is getting too hot for chocolate lovers
IN THE last months of 2014 breaking news shocked the world’s chocolate lovers: Within a few years the world could face a significant potential cocoa shortage due to climate change.
The news that by 2050 there might be not enough cocoa to make one of the most loved and affordable luxury products came as a bolt in the blue in a year when the chocolate industry enjoyed record global revenues of US$117 billion.
Such a relevant performance was driven by a 2.1 per cent increase in volume, reflecting above all a growing appetite for chocolate in emerging markets.
The single biggest factor improving the industry’s performance is in fact due to a significant increase consumption in many major emerging markets such as India, Brazil and China.
The potential long-term growth in emerging economies – many of which have growing middle classes – is vast. To give just one example: The per capita consumption of chocolate in China is only a tenth of that in Switzerland. Yet the future is not without challenges because in the last four decades cocoa production, which is already under pressure due to unsustainable farming techniques and lack of investments by smallholder farmers, will be significantly challenged by climate change.
Combining the abovementioned factors with the rising demand for chocolate from China, Brazil and other emerging markets as well, the cocoa industry is likely to face supply shortages in the near future. According to a study released by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture, temperatures in some regions of Ghana and Ivory Coast, which together account for more than 60 per cent of global cocoa supply, would become unsuitable for cocoa growing.
The objective of the study, which was partially financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundations, was to design future climate scenarios to predict the impact of climate change on the suitability for growing cocoa in the main growing regions of Ghana and Ivory Coast.
In Ghana and Ivory Coast the yearly and monthly rainfall will decrease slightly by 2050, except for coastal areas in Ghana, but the yearly and monthly minimum and maximum temperatures will increase by 2030 and continue to increase by 2050.
Overall climate becomes less seasonal in terms of variation throughout the year with temperature in specific districts increasing by about 1.2°C by 2030 and of 2.1°C by 2050 and less seasonal in precipitation with the number of dry months decreasing from four to three.
The implications are that the distribution of suitability within the current cocoa growing areas in Ghana and Ivory Coast in general will decrease quite seriously by 2050 because of the temperature increases. — WP-Bloomberg