Will Easter chocolate become a luxury?

June 2025. A light rain falls on the cocoa trees at the Centre Abel in Grand-Bassam, an agricultural cooperative in the suburbs of Abidjan, the capital of Côte d’Ivoire. Amid the coffee, banana, and carambola trees, these modest shrubs bear orange cocoa pods directly on their trunks and branches.

These pods, which are the length of a hand, contain precious cocoa beans, which, after fermentation and drying, will turn all the shades of brown. They will be ground and processed into various chocolate products, often far from their country of origin.

Native to the Amazon, the cocoa tree (Theobroma cacao) is a delicate, and even capricious shrub. It thrives in the shade in its juvenile stage, but later requires at least four hours of sunlight daily, a relative humidity of 80% to 90%, and deep soil rich in clay and humus.

More specifically, it requires 1,200 to 2,000 mm of rainfall per year and temperatures ranging from 18 to 32°C. When it is too hot or too dry for too long — which is to say, for more than 89 days a year — bean production decreases significantly.

However, climate change is disrupting local weather conditions. Periods of drought and extreme heat becoming more frequent. And rainfalls are increasingly irregular. This poses a huge challenge for cocoa-producing countries, among which Côte d’Ivoire plays a leading role.

The consequences are already evident. “Our production used to exceed 2 million metric tonnes per year, but over the past two years, it has dropped to between 1.7 and 1.8 million metric tonnes due to climate change,” says Adolphe Mahyao, director of the Gagnoa station at the Centre national de recherche agronomique of Côte d’Ivoire (CNRA). Thus, in 2023–2024, Côte d’Ivoire’s cocoa exports fell by 34% as a result of unusual rains, which disrupted flowering and encouraged the growth of mould.

In a rapidly growing market, how can we help Ivorian cooperatives adapt? “They were having difficulty planning for the future. We wanted to support them so they could find solutions adapted to their new reality,” explains Renée Brunelle, environmental advisor at the Société de coopération pour le développement international (Socodevi). It was with this in mind that she launched the AdaptCoop project in 2019.

Supported by the International Development Research Centre, this project brought together numerous Ivorian and Canadian organizations: the CNRA, the Ouranos Climate Innovation Hub, the Agence nationale d’appui au développement rural (ANADER), and the African Centre of Excellence on Climate Change, Biodiversity, and Sustainable Agriculture at Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny, among others.

The goal: to improve cocoa producers’ knowledge and provide them with tools to help them adopt more sustainable practices that make their plantations more resilient.

It was quite a challenge as the project was developed in collaboration with three cooperatives representing thousands of small farms. “We had to find a common language and translate the applied research to the realities faced by the agricultural producers,” notes Alla Kouadio Okou, advisor to the technical director at ANADER and lead coordinator of the AdaptCoop project in Côte d’Ivoire.

The temperature is rising

The first phase of the project, completed in 2022, aimed to assess the extent of the climate change already occurring in Côte d’Ivoire’s two main cocoa-producing regions, in the south and in the centre of the country. The first region has two rainy seasons, while the second has one dry season and one rainy season.

The research team considered various temperature and rainfall change scenarios for 2021–2050 and 2041–2070. Result: The impact of global warming will be most harmful in the central region of the country. The number of days with temperatures above 32°C — the maximum temperature that cocoa trees can tolerate while still producing beans — is likely to double or even triple by 2041-2070.

And this lush region is the main region for cocoa production in the country. “Our analyses show that the increase in the number of hot days could lead to the disappearance of cocoa production in certain areas,’ says Évelyne N’Datchoh Touré, a researcher at the Laboratoire des Sciences de la Matière, de l’Environnement et de l’Énergie Solaire at Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny, who participated in the project.

“The immediate effect will be the water stress suffered by seedlings.” Excessive temperatures also inhibit the activity of soil microorganisms. “These adverse conditions harm the survival of cocoa trees,” says Mr. Mahyao from the CNRA. The impact can already be seen in some areas, such as Soubré, Bangolo, and Duékoué. High mortality rates among cocoa trees — caused by their stems and buds drying out — are dooming new plantations to failure. Furthermore, in cocoa pods that are not sufficiently hydrated, the beans may stick together and, as a result, become misshapen. Thus, the agronomist argues, “exceeding temperature thresholds could harm the quality of the beans.”

Unreliable rains

When it comes to precipitation, it is more difficult to predict specific changes. “We still expect a fair amount of rain, but we are also forecasting longer periods of drought, shifts in the timing of the rainy seasons, and more intense rainfall,” Ms. Touré explains. In other words, the total rainfall would still be favourable for cocoa cultivation, but the decrease in rainfall frequency and the increase in rainfall intensity will pose problems. “There are also concerns that we could lose up to 15 days of rain, which could hinder flowering and proper fruit development,” the expert says. This unpredictability is can already be seen on the ground. “It can be raining in one field and, 50 metres away, it won’t be raining,” she adds.

Furthermore, intermittent heavy rains and rising temperatures can also lead to the proliferation of certain insects or microorganisms, such as brown rot or the “cocoa swollen shoot virus,” which is transmitted by mealybugs.

None of which is reassuring to 5 million Ivorians who are directly and indirectly dependent on cocoa for their livelihoods. Especially since, in addition to climate change, the industry is facing numerous economic, ethical, and environmental challenges.

Resilient agricultural practices

In 2019, the World Bank estimated that “54.9% of Ivorian cocoa producers and their families [lived] below the poverty line.” A small-scale producer is usually a family that owns a plot of land ranging from three to five hectares and does all the work by hand, without mechanization or automation. At the same time, the country has lost 80% of its forest cover over the past 50 years due to the expansion of cocoa and other crops.

What practices should be prioritized to increase yields, protect the environment, and adapt to future changes? To explore these issues, the AdaptCoop project reached out to three cooperatives representing 9,185 producers in the central and southern regions of the country.

On the ground, the process began with interpretation workshops on climate scenarios and consultations on potential strategies for adapting to global warming, conducted by the ANADER team. Cooperative members also participated in training activities on agroecological practices. Prior surveys conducted in Abengourou, Gagnoa, Vavoua, and Soubré identified several such practices. For example, the intercropping of cocoa trees with food crops (yams, okra, etc.) and edible cover crops (peanuts, sweet potatoes, soybeans, etc.).

Similarly, agroforestry, the practice of planting trees among crops, offers a variety of benefits: shade, microclimate regulation, improved soil fertility, and even additional income. As part of the AdaptCoop project, more than 25,000 tree seedlings were distributed.

“Planting trees in crop fields helps moderate temperatures by maintaining a healthy level of coolness and improves water management,” explains Alain Olivier, director of the Groupe interdisciplinaire de recherche en agroforesterie at Université Laval. “Young cocoa trees are sensitive to the sun, and planting a fast-growing banana tree will be beneficial,” says the Quebec expert, who is the author of a recent work on the subject and did not participate in the project.

Introducing fruit trees to plantations is not a new idea. “That’s what you used to see a lot on traditional plantations, a variety of crops as opposed to monoculture. Agroforestry has even become a key component of the current national reforestation policy,” says Mr. Okou, coordinator of AdaptCoop.

To improve soil fertility, the ANADER team also encouraged the production of compost made from cocoa residues. “This reduces the use of agricultural chemicals and water, and mulch around the trunks of cocoa trees,” notes Mr. Mahyao. Weeding during the right periods, and pruning of dry branches, has also been implemented. Similarly, pruning seedlings after the first big rain helps reduce the spread of diseases and insects. By reducing the use of insecticides and chemical fertilizers, these practices will “help protect the health of producers and the environment,” notes Mr. Okou.

The AdaptCoop project expanded to include weather-protected storage of beans to ensure proper drying. It also emphasized the pooling of resources, for example by promoting the collective use of improved bean dryers, maximizing the use of solar energy without the use of fossil fuels, or by supporting the creation of community forests.

The idea was to support producers at every stage, from the gathering of information to the implementation of new methods, in addition to helping rehabilitate rural roads or even revitalize village savings and credit associations.

To this end, a practical decision-making tool in the form of easy-to-understand fact sheets was developed. Tested with members of the three cooperatives, this gender-sensitive tool, which takes into account the different realities faced by men and women, compiles climate scenarios for various regions and links them to recommended agricultural practices. The fact sheets thus describe the most promising local agroecological methods based on the identified problems, such as shade cultivation for young cocoa trees. Adaptable to other food crops and perennial crops, such as oil palms and coffee trees, this approach “is now part of our toolkit. It’s a real asset for us!” emphasizes Mr. Okou. And for all the chocolate lovers.

The program described in this article and production of this report were made possible by support from Canada’s International Development Research Centre.