The nectar of the gods, chocolate, is in for a world of hurt from climate change experts warn.
The cacao (Theobroma cacao) is a small understory tree native to the tropical rainforests of the Americas. It evolved in clumps along the shaded riverbanks of the Amazon basin on the eastern equatorial slopes of the Andes. It was the Mayan of South America that started using the cacao in rituals and assigning it a monetary value, the rest is history. The tree is now grown in tropical rainforests across the planet. Africa grows much of the high quality beans that the world uses to make chocolate.
The optimum altitude for cacao is 300 to 800 feet above sea level ( which will increase to 1,475 to 1,640 feet above sea level for optimal altitude due to increasing temperatures from climate change). The tree needs a minimum of 5 years to mature and as temperatures rise, the plant becomes more susceptible to disease and pests. The mountainous areas are also home to nature preserves in a region of the earth that is rapidly becoming urbanized and developed for agricultural, mining and other such interests that threaten many species with extinction.
Impoverished and/or indigenous people grow this crop in small isolated portions of mountainous areas of the tropics. There is also an issue of child slavery that feeds the coffers of the multi-national corporations.
NOAA ‘s climate.gov website, in a post from 2016, notes the precarious position the luscious food is in for from a rapidly warming world.
Another staple of American consumption, coffee, suffers direct harm from rising temperatures, but chocolate is different. Rising temperatures alone won’t necessarily hurt cacao production. Cacao cultivation areas in Malaysia, for instance, already endure a warmer climate than in West Africa without any obvious negative effect.
The danger to chocolate comes from an increase in evapotranspiration, especially since the higher temperatures projected for West Africa by 2050 are unlikely to be accompanied by an increase in rainfall, according to business-as-usual carbon dioxide emissions scenarios. In other words, as higher temperatures squeeze more water out of soil and plants, it's unlikely that rainfall will increase enough to offset the moisture loss.
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Läderach and his team report that areas expected to show improved cultivation conditions are often hilly terrain. One example is Ghana’s Atewa Range. It’s a forest preserve where cultivation isn’t permitted. Cacao-growing countries may have to choose which priority matters more: growing a product to meet a global demand, or preserving natural habitat.
In fact, Läderach and coauthors found that, of the 294 locations examined in the study, only 10.5% showed increasing suitability for cacao production; the remaining 89.5% were likely to become less suitable by 2050. The authors continued, “These changes in climatic suitability are predicted to take place over a time period of almost 40 years, so they will mostly impact the next rather than the current generation of cocoa trees and farmers. In other words, there is time for adaptation.”
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