The year is 2059. The last known sighting of a chocolate bar was in the quaint village of Pucklechurch, South Gloucestershire, England. Like that of the dodo, its extinction was not immediately noticed, and like the flightless bird, chocolate is considered almost mythical.
“The best part was peeling the resealable wrapper, breaking off a piece and letting it melt softly on your tongue. Only one piece at a time though.”
These are the words of 85-year-old Charles Pip, who used to eat chocolate. The memory casts a pall on his already hallowed features. He is, by all accounts, a broken man.
This scenario is a nightmare. Welcome to the chocopocalypse.
The doomsday plot made headlines in 2018 following the prediction by so-called research experts that chocolate is slated to disappear in 40 years because the cocoa tree, Theobroma cacao, is struggling to survive in drier weather conditions.
To be sure, the world is unlikely to run out of chocolate. Demand remains high in developed markets, even on the crest of the anti-sugar movement, and there is burgeoning demand in regions such as China and India, two of the world’s fastest-growing chocolate markets.
Both countries have historically had low per-capita consumption of chocolate because their food cultures are deeply steeped in tradition, but the rising affluence of young, urban consumers as well as the prevalence of gifting tradition, has brought with it demand for high-quality foods and drinks manufactured by international companies. This includes a growing affinity for foreign chocolate brands.
Global retail sales of chocolate reached $109.5bn in 2018 and are expected to climb 8.2% by 2022, research from Euromonitor International shows.
Five companies sell more than half of the world’s branded chocolate by value: Mars Incorporated, Mondelēz International, Ferrero Group, Nestlé and The Hershey Company.
Declining yields
While end-is-nigh exaggerations of chocolate going extinct don’t hold true, “Big Chocolate”, as the world’s multinational confectionery players are known, do have cause for concern. Cocoa yields have been dwindling as diseased trees, climate change, ageing farmers and poor farming practices depress output.
So concerned has the chocolate industry been that 12 of the world’s leading chocolate producers and cocoa processors have been sharing private data on farming practices and crop yields from their cocoa origins since 2014.
Yaa Peprah Amekudzi, who runs Cadbury owner Mondelēz’s cocoa sustainability operations in Ghana, says remedial action became necessary.
“Among younger people there wasn’t much inspiration to be on the farms. They would leave to sell small goods in Accra or for education outside their communities and once they got used to the bright lights of the city, it was difficult to return to a forest.
“Some even turned towards galamsey [illegal mining]. Interestingly, wherever you find cocoa you also find gold. This put pressure on farms and there was the fear that they [farmers] would go back to using kids and all the work done around underage labour would unravel,” she says.
About 74% of the world’s cocoa is grown by West African farmers who either inherit or become stewards of farmland.
Ivory Coast accounts for just more than 40%, Ghana about 20% and Nigeria and Cameroon about 5% each. With the largely labour-intensive process of farming relegated to an ageing workforce, hectares of cocoa trees were left vulnerable to weeds and parasitic plants. Limited access to capital from banks for the right planting materials saw farmers become disillusioned with the prospect of replacing older, less productive trees that had long passed their peak production age.
About 90% of the world’s cocoa is produced on small farms with less than 2ha of land and an annual average yield of just 600-800kg. According to chocolate companies, farmers could easily grow 1,500kg per hectare with the appropriate planting material, fertilisers and modern agricultural practices.
For Mondelēz International then, the plan was this: smarter farming and better lives on farms.
The company’s Cocoa Life programme, launched in 2012, aims to invest $400m by 2022 across its cocoa-growing origins — Ghana, Ivory Coast, Indonesia, India, the Dominican Republic and Brazil.
Conventional wisdom, which suggests that sustainability is just a fantastic publicity magnet, is way off when consecutive weak harvests could lead to an eventual production crisis. Without a viable supply chain and the next cocoa farming generation, there will be no cocoa.
Improving productivity
Farmers assisted by Cocoa Life are identifying crop diseases earlier and are being taught soil management and how to use chemicals properly. New seedlings are replacing old trees, and though cocoa farming still needs a lot of human intervention, the laborious use of manual pruners and sprayers has given way to motorised devices.
The result has been more productive and profitable farms that are essentially run like businesses.
“Farmers used to grow their trees very tall, which would affect their necks at harvest time. They have been taught how to prune so trees do not become too tall. Of course, issues like climate change are ongoing, but at least yields are increasing,” says Cocoa Life’s Peprah Amekudzi.
Whip-smart and unassuming, she cuts a petite figure in her dress made from sumptuous Ghanaian cloth. At no more than 1.56m, she’s tougher than she looks. Her days are spent crisscrossing cocoa communities and farms in her 4x4, changing mindsets and tempering expectations.
“Farmers used to follow their parents to the farm so they had indigenous knowledge … they were using the very same methods that were taught by generations before them. Farming cocoa sustainably didn’t exist [here]. Understanding cultural nuances helps. You have to show respect, and you get trust and then ultimately change,” she says.
Having worked on their own families’ farms when growing up, parents often don’t know that child labour puts development at risk. Education and rising incomes will change this, Cocoa Life believes. When children are at school, it means they aren’t working on the farms, and additional income will allow for the hiring of extra hands.
Cocoa Life’s initiatives also extend to microfinance schemes such as village savings and loans associations so women can set up small businesses such as bakeries, soap-making facilities and tomato farms. Women are becoming income generators and farms are starting to sustain themselves outside the cocoa season.
“Not every woman is interested in farming just because her husband is. These additional sources of income allow women to stand on their own. Even for the female farmers, they have something to do on the off season,” Amekudzi says.
In Ghana, cocoa is harvested twice a year by cutting the ripe pods from the trees, breaking them open with machetes and extracting the tightly packed white beans.
The main harvest lasts from October to March and the mid-crop from May to August. The beans are fermented between banana leaves for 5-7 days with two or three turnings, before being dried on wooden racks for another six days in the sun. Beans are bagged at collection centres by licensed buying companies then taken to warehouses to be graded and sealed in Jute sacks for export.
Cocoa processing into nibs, cocoa butter, cocoa liquor and cocoa powder is handled by three major processors: Barry Callebut, Cargill and Olam. They grind more than 60% of all traded cocoa, and supply not only the chocolate giants but bakers, caterers, hotels and food companies too. Zurich-based Barry Callebut, for example, supplies Unilever with 70% of its chocolate needs.
Unilever is the world’s biggest ice-cream maker and it uses chocolate to coat Magnum ice creams and in other ice cream products such as Cornettos, Carte d’Or and Ben & Jerry tubs.
It would be remiss to not acknowledge that the lion’s share of profits from chocolate come from marketing and selling it, not in the raw agricultural commodity. This is not unlike the vanilla, coffee or cotton industries.
In a country where most still live below the World Bank’s poverty line of $2 a day, Ghanaian cocoa farmers typically make $900 a year.
Sustainable development
Harsh is the reality that exists: commodity-producing countries in developing markets have yet to convert natural wealth into a decent standard of living for their people.
The rise of responsibly sourced cocoa by multinationals to ensure more ethical practices and better earnings, as well as any credible efforts to examine and mend their supply chains offers, at least, some hope.
“The industry is looking to help farmers as the fear is that if they can’t have a decent standard of living they will swap into different cash crops and there will be a shortage of cocoa long-term. Food manufacturers are working to improve the quality of life [for farmers]. It makes sense for them, but also chimes well with consumers, particularly millennials, who are concerned about farmer welfare,” Jon Cox, an analyst at Kepler Cheuvreux in Zurich, says.
Cocoa beans were first introduced to Ghana by Presbyterian Basel missionaries at the beginning of the 19th century. Legend, however, attributes its widespread cultivation to Tetteh Quarshie, an industrious young blacksmith who lived and worked on the island of Fernando Po (now Bioko, Equatorial Guinea) for several years.
On return to his native Ghana in 1879, he is said to have smuggled cocoa beans in his toolbox and planted them on his farm in Mampong-Akuapim, a small town in the Eastern Region of Ghana. The crop went on to supply seedlings to pioneering cocoa farmers in Ghana. The country raked in close to $3bn in export income from cocoa in 2018.
Under the shaded enclave of a muggy cocoa plantation in the New-Juaben municipal district within Ghana’s Eastern Region, farmer Francisoko Lanqueye stands — a machete in one hand, and a bulging, yellowish cocoa pod in the other.
I ask if Quarshie’s legacy, and Ghana’s natural bounty, will thrive in the future.
He thinks for a moment, and then says: “We never had the training before, now we take advice and income is growing. Cocoa farming used to be a poor man’s job, only for uneducated people, but the young set is returning because there is good business in cocoa. You can build a family and a home.”
- Moorad is an associate editor at the Financial Mail. She was a guest of Mondelēz International in Ghana.
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