Cocoa yields will be "destroyed" by 2030 without financial support and fairer markets, Ivory Coast farmers have warned.
The West African nation is the world's largest producer of cocoa, with farmers in the Bafing-Tonkpi region supplying chocolate to global markets, including the United Kingdom.
But years of depressed prices have eroded farmers' ability to reinvest in their land, meaning aging trees, diseases and increasingly unpredictable climate conditions have caused productivity to plummet and prices to skyrocket.
While U.K. shoppers pay 50% more for some chocolate products this Easter, farmers living in poverty at the other end of the supply chain are getting little financial benefit at the farm gate.
Yeyasso, a farming cooperative based in the western city of Man, said production from its 5,000 cocoa producers has dropped by 30% in recent years, prompting many to turn to farming other commodities, such as rubber or palm.
Biabate Posseni, 34, a Yeyasso farming lead who helps to train cocoa farmers and monitor their practices, said: "Climate change is strongly impacting the yield. 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," he told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (DPA) news agency.
"By 2030, if nothing is done, we won't have any cocoa trees because, with climate change, all the cocoa trees will be destroyed."
Vemo Bakayoko, 42, a cocoa farmer for Yeyasso in the area of Bogouine, said his two-hectare farm used to turn over 700 kilograms of cocoa a year a decade ago, but last year he produced less than half of that, at 300 kilograms.
"We can see the change," he said, describing how heavy rains are increasing the risk of black rot disease. "We're definitely scared because we don't know if these unpredictable conditions will stop."
Government, regulators and cooperatives are all rolling out efforts to tackle climate impacts facing producers, but resources remain scarce.
Thomas Adei, the regional director at the Ivorian Ministry for Agriculture, said agroforestry is "at the core" of the government's policy, asking farmers to support biodiversity by planting fruit and shade trees on their farms.
In the 1960s, yields were growing and diseases were few, Adei said, but officials continued to push farmers to "produce, produce, produce," leading to unsustainable practices and widespread deforestation.
"It was an abusive consumption of the forest. It's had a very, very, very negative impact on cocoa productivity in Cote d’Ivoire," he told DPA.
"When all is said, the government is doing the best it can to address this issue because the livelihoods of farmers depend on it."
As the U.K. and Europe prepare to introduce or enforce regulations that ban the sale of commodities linked to deforestation, the Ivorian authorities are also developing methods to ensure compliance.
Fadiga Mamadou Deye, head of the cocoa board for the Bafing-Tonkpi region, has been leading a major farmer ID card pilot, which involves gathering and storing data on various aspects, including annual yields, tree numbers, and agroforestry efforts for each farm.
Fairtrade-certified cooperatives like Yeyasso have immediately signed on, but others have less financial or logistical resources to reach all farmers.
"If most stakeholders in the value chain do not feel concerned about these challenges, it simply means that one day the cooperatives will disappear – vamoose," Deye said.
Yeyasso has also taken actions such as geo-mapping its farms, setting up tree nurseries, and planting approximately 140,000 new cocoa, fruit, and shade trees.
However, it is also the first globally to trial a new supermarket supply chain initiative led by Fairtrade, which was recently approved by the U.K.'s competition watchdog.
The Shared Impact project is working to encourage supermarkets, such as M&S, to purchase commodities on longer-term contracts collectively, thereby boosting the impact for producers and mitigating the increased risk.
With the pilot, Yeyasso aims to double the cocoa it sells on Fairtrade terms from 20% to 40%, thereby increasing the premium payments it then allocates to social impact and environmental initiatives.
More widely, Shared Impact could help to provide more income stability for farmers, provide funds for training, enable the recruitment of more staff, and offer investment certainty to struggling cooperatives, Doumbia Abou Zeid, the chairperson of Yeyasso's board, said.
"With short-term contracts, nothing is certain. At any time the job can stop and so, of course, (farmers) are demotivated and will then look for better opportunities outside the cocoa industry," he added.
