Tag: cocoa production

‘Easter Eggflation’ is Not Due to Climate Change, Euro News

Euro News posted an article, “‘Easter eggflation’: How climate change and budget cuts have sent the price of chocolate soaring,” claiming that global warming is leading to the destruction of cocoa production in West Africa, which is leading to ever higher prices for chocolate. Based on real world data, this is false, regardless of what modeling says. Sadly, this story has become a mainstream media staple before Easter in recent years, and Climate Realism has debunked it before.

From ClimateRealism


By Linnea Lueken


Euro News posted an article, “‘Easter eggflation’: How climate change and budget cuts have sent the price of chocolate soaring,” claiming that global warming is leading to the destruction of cocoa production in West Africa, which is leading to ever higher prices for chocolate. Based on real world data, this is false, regardless of what modeling says. Sadly, this story has become a mainstream media staple before Easter in recent years, and Climate Realism has debunked it before, here, for example.

Euro News declares that “human-caused climate change has fuelled extreme weather events in West Africa, triggering cocoa production to plummet,” which has led to a surge in the price of chocolate. What’s more, the post goes on to say that “experts have warned that the world may be cocoa-free by 2050, if heat-trapping gases continue to bake the planet.”

While this whole article is an example of exaggerated climate claims, the “cocoa free by 2050” is truly egregious hyperbole.

Modest warming, and any supposed downstream weather effects from it, has been occurring for more than 100 years. Data since the 1960s on cocoa bean production and yield from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) show that yields and production rose fairly consistently in West Africa, at a 75 percent and 312 percent rise, respectively. This increase even includes the past few bad seasons, which still rank in the top-10 years for cocoa production. (See figure below)

Regarding the extreme weather that Euro News says is hammering West Africa, Climate Realism has shown that these weather extremes are far from unusual for the region. The reality is that underdeveloped countries have a harder time responding to and building defenses against extreme weather events when they do occur naturally.

Fungicides are useful for combatting the black pod disease that 2023’s heavy rain caused in some West African cocoa groves, and some farms in Ghana make use of them. However, most cocoa production in West Africa comes from smallholder farms that often use minimal inputs like fungicides and fertilizers. This makes the impact of disease outbreaks much worse.

Later, the article admits that “Illegal gold mining, ageing trees, and even cocoa smugglers are also impacting surging prices.”

The ageing tree issue is a bigger one than Euro News would have us believe. Most trees planted by smallholder farms are more than 30 to 40-years-old, which is at or past the productive lifespan of cocoa trees. Some research has estimated that a quarter of all the trees in Ghana are above 40-years-old. Older trees are also more susceptible to disease, damage from weather, and pests. This is especially true for smallholder farms that suffer from soil depletion because they are not able to afford to fertilize the soil.

One study in the journal Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment says that “cocoa orchards in West Africa are overaged and farmers prefer to abandon them and create new ones at forest expense.”

There has long been a structural problem in the way West African cocoa farms operate. They are not adequately planting replacement trees as the older ones age out, and they are depleting the soil in many places so even when new trees are planted, they struggle to reach high yields and suffer the impacts of natural stresses that healthier, well-fed trees would shrug off.

This is not a climate issue, it is a third-world farming practices issue. But the good news is that the locals are more aware of the problem and studies like the ones linked are helping to target the bad practices and offer other solutions.

Weather hasn’t become more extreme in cocoa growing regions and production and yields remain high. Accordingly, Euro News has done their Easter-candy loving audience a disservice by blaming the increased price of chocolate on climate change, when they instead could have given them an interesting and informative lesson in how volatile agriculture is—especially the kind of smallholder “organic” farming that many like to promote as superior to more modern methods.

Quit Lying, The New Republic, Climate Change Isn’t Threatening ‘Favorite Holiday Foods’

A recent story published by The New Republic claims that various foods, popular especially during the Christmas holiday season, are declining due to climate change, perhaps soon to disappear from store shelves entirely. This is false. Despite the anecdotal tales told by The New Republic about specific farmers’ respective plights, U.N. data clearly demonstrate a substantial growth in the production of each of the crops discussed over the past 35 years of global warming.

A selection of spices, including cinnamon sticks, star anise, cloves, and dried orange slices, arranged on a dark surface.

From ClimateRealism

By H. Sterling Burnett

A recent story published by The New Republic claims that various foods, popular especially during the Christmas holiday season, are declining due to climate change, perhaps soon to disappear from store shelves entirely. This is false. Despite the anecdotal tales told by The New Republic about specific farmers’ respective plights, U.N. data clearly demonstrate a substantial growth in the production of each of the crops discussed over the past 35 years of global warming.

In the story, “Climate Change Is Coming for Your Favorite Holiday Foods,” New Republic intern Rachel Kahn writes, “Chocolate, vanilla, coffee, cinnamon: The ingredients for your favorite holiday foods are becoming increasingly harder to grow because of climate change.” If true, that would be news to the world market for these foods, each of which have seen substantial production growth since 2000 and before.

Climate Realism has repeatedly refuted past media claims that climate change was causing a decline in coffee and cocoa production, here, here, here, and here, for a few examples, and so we won’t spend further time on these thoroughly debunked claims, other than to point out, FAO data show that since 1990:

  • Cocoa production has grown by more than 157 percent.
  • In the Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire) cocoa bean production increased by more than a 194 percent (nearly doubling, and setting a new record in 2023);
  • In Ghana cocoa bean production expanded by just over 122 percent;
  • And in Nigeria cocoa bean production grew by almost 17 percent.

As far as coffee goes, FAO data show that since 1990, global coffee production has increased by 82 percent, setting the new record for highest production in 2023, including substantial growth in major coffee producing countries like Brazil and Vietnam.

The New Republic piece throws the spices vanilla and cinnamon into the mix for the holiday tastes supposedly threatened by climate change. Yet, just like with coffee and cocoa, the asserted decline does not bear up under scrutiny. Vanilla production has more than doubled since 1990, according to FAO data – with production increasing by about 135 percent. Cinnamon production expanded even more dramatically, with a production increase exceeding 289 percent. (See the graph, below)

Line graph illustrating the global production increase of vanilla and cinnamon from 1990 to 2022, showing vanilla production in blue and cinnamon production in red.

With the tinniest bit of effort, Kahn or The New Republic’s fact-checkers and editors could have discovered these facts themselves. They evidently couldn’t let facts get in the way of a scary holiday story.

It is true that the loss of coffee, chocolate (made from cocoa), cinnamon or vanilla, would make the holidays less festive and tasty. Yet thankfully, and directly refuting The New Republic’s assertion, it is impossible to tease out or discern a tangible threat to the continued availability of those treats in the readily available data or production trends. It is sad when, rather than an exploration of the facts, a false narrative drives the news cycle, but that’s just what seemingly happened in this New Republic story, a fairy-tale only the pre-conversion Grinch could love.

The Independent Misleads About Rising Cocoa Prices, Government, Not Climate, is Responsible

A recent article at The Independent, “How the climate crisis will push up prices for your Easter chocolate,” claims that cocoa bean production is threatened by climate change, and this is why prices are increasing. This is false. The Independent cites a study using a novel, recently developed AI model forecasting cocoa production in various countries, rather than investigating the full picture, and real world data, including neighboring nations’ cocoa production. To the extent cocoa prices are rising, it is not due to climate change induced shortages but rather government policies.

From ClimateRealism

By Heartland Institute

By Linnea Lueken and H. Sterling Burnett

A recent article at The Independent, “How the climate crisis will push up prices for your Easter chocolate,” claims that cocoa bean production is threatened by climate change, and this is why prices are increasing. This is false. The Independent cites a study using a novel, recently developed AI model forecasting cocoa production in various countries, rather than investigating the full picture, and real-world data, including neighboring nations’ cocoa production. To the extent cocoa prices are rising, it is not due to climate change induced shortages but rather government policies.

The Independent claims that extreme heat is increasing the risk to crops and has been for “the past two decades in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Ecuador, and Indonesia, according to modelling shared exclusively with The Independent from ClimateAI, a California-based machine learning company that models harvest outcomes. And that impact is only set to get worse as global temperatures increase.”

This AI modelling “has only been around for the last few months, and has been specifically designed to create accurate outlooks for more data-scarce environments like Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire[.]” The company claims it incorporates historic weather data, current satellite data, soil information and topography, as well as “local agricultural knowledge[.]”

They use the model outputs to declare that yields and production of cocoa are declining because of climate change, or at the very least are “at risk” of declining. It is too bad that the models were shared exclusively with The Independent, and the company’s work is proprietary, because it makes it impossible to know whether or not they are leaning on the same flawed climate models that consistently mislead on agricultural production – as Climate Realism has pointed out many times for crops around the world.

Tellingly, since the models are new and propriety, their results lack transparency, and there is no suggestion that the models have been peer reviewed or verified by testing by outside researchers. The company behind the proprietary AI modelling is basically asking the world to trust its findings, take it on blind faith – that’s not how science works.

Real world data, as opposed to unverified model outputs, by contrast show that, in general, cocoa yields and production have increased during the recent period of slight warming. Interestingly, data show that while yields from cocoa plantations in Côte d’Ivoire are declining, production has increased considerably during the recent period of modest warming, according to UN Food and Agriculture Organization (UN FAO) data. (See figure below)

The Independent only acknowledges the declining yields, but neglects to mention that total production from the country hit an all-time record high in 2023. Production has increased 469 percent since 1980.

This indicates that the amount of cocoa from individual farms may be declining, likely older farms but more are coming online.

If climate change were the reason behind Côte d’Ivoire’s woes, it would be expected production on farms in nearby countries would suffer similarly, since weather is widespread. Yet Ghana’s yields levels have not experienced the declines Côte d’Ivoire has. (See figure below)

Another country evaluated as threatened by the AI study is Ecuador. UN FAO data show that they have had consistent production and yield records; since just 2015, Ecuador’s cocoa production and yields have broken previous records six times. (See figure below)

So what is it that is making Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire cocoa production suffer, leading to such high cocoa prices? The answer can be found towards the end of The Independent’s article where it mentions the fact that Ghana’s government has a stranglehold on cocoa pricing, noting that last year, “the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD), which controls salaries for the country’s cocoa farmers, announced that it would raise the amount it pays cocoa farmers by 45 per cent[.]”

Blogger Jo Nova has a writeup on this that is devastating to the alarmist narrative. She points out that the price fixing in Ghana, which is the second largest cocoa producer in the world, is a major driver for the issues that led to spikes in prices the last year:

African governments have fixed the price of cocoa for decades, forcing poor farmers to work for a pittance, and keeping the big profits for themselves. Not surprisingly, even though there is a wild price spike, farmers in Ghana are leaving the industry, smuggling crops out (because they get a better price). They didn’t plant new trees, they ran out of money for fertilizer, and didn’t try new varieties. Their children don’t want to farm cocoa, and the yields are falling on old sickly plantations.

So, surprise, socialist government controls wrecked the industry and they are now scrambling to put the pieces back together. Things are so desperate, the government of Ghana raised the price of cocoa by 58% last April and then raised the price of cocoa by another 45% last September, to try to reduce the smuggling. (The government was losing too much money). At one point last year it was estimated that a third of the national crop was lost to smugglers. A few months after this, the farmers were hoarding their beans in expectation the government would have to give them another price rise. Just chaos for everyone.

The Independent fails to discuss smuggling at all.

A similar result is found in Indonesia. After the Indonesian government embraced various U.N. climate and sustainable development goals, and began reaping the international aid that accompanied adoption, it began encouraging its farmers to adopt “sustainable” practices, including reducing the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and focus on the “quality” of the cocoa produced over the quantity. The result: after a sustained growth in production from the 1980s through the early 2000s, yields began to decline, with production falling shortly thereafter.

After initially falling, Cocoa production has now basically flatlined in Indonesia since the country signed the Indonesia Compact in 2013 with a focus on improving cocoa quality, natural resource use, and lowering greenhouse gas emissions. After 2018, the program ended and the money ran out. The damage was done, cocoa production and yields have never recovered to pre-Compact levels. (see the figure, below)

Crop production will always have good and bad years in different parts of the world, especially in places with government meddling and mishandling of resources and price fixing which makes it harder for farmers to invest in new cocoa plants when others are growing old, the soils and trees worn out, making them less able to withstand bad weather seasons. Blaming climate change in an effort to rally support for green policies is misleading by the omission of other relevant factors, and is counterproductive to improving cocoa yields and production.

Wrong, Earth.com, Cocoa Production Is Not ‘Under Extreme Climate Pressure’ It’s Improving

Earth.com published a story claiming climate change is causing cocoa production to fall in West and Central Africa. This is false. Data show that cocoa production has increased during the last few decades of modest warming, rather than falling. Part of the reason for this is improved growing conditions in those regions and carbon dioxide fertilization.

From ClimateRealism

By H. Sterling Burnett

Earth.com published a story claiming climate change is causing cocoa production to fall in West and Central Africa. This is false. Data show that cocoa production has increased during the last few decades of modest warming, rather than falling. Part of the reason for this is improved growing conditions in those regions and carbon dioxide fertilization.

In the Earth.com story, “Cocoa production in Africa is under extreme climate pressure,” writer Andrei Ionescu, references a study published in Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, which claims that climate change may result in a 50 percent drop in production across West and Central Africa, a region which accounts for 70 percent of global cocoa production. Ionescu goes further claiming, “Climate change is substantially affecting cocoa production in West and Central Africa.” The problem is the data falsifies this claim, and the projections are based on the worst-case scenario projections from flawed climate models.

Climate Realism and Climate at a Glance have written multiple times previously concerning the admission by climate modelers that the models run way to hot. Accordingly, projections of impacts dependent on the models and their high emission scenarios cannot be trusted. Neither scientific research nor public policies should be built upon assumptions and projections that are known to be fatally flawed.

Leaving this aside, data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization show that, like crops everywhere, cocoa production varies from year. But accounting for interannual ups and downs, over the recent period of modest climate change, cocoa production has generally increased in West and Central Africa.

The research in particular focuses on cocoa production in Cameroon, the Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire), Ghana, and Nigeria. FAO data for those countries show that since 1990:

  • In Cameroon cocoa bean production has grown by more than 157 percent;
  • In the Ivory Coast (Côte d’Ivoire) cocoa bean production increased by more than a 194 percent (nearly doubling, and setting a new record in 2023);
  • In Ghana cocoa bean production expanded by just over 122 percent;
  • And in Nigeria cocoa bean production grew by almost 17 percent.

Each of these countries experienced multiple years of record setting production over the past three and a half decades of climate change. (See the figure below).

With these facts in mind, there is no evidence whatsoever that climate change is putting cocoa production under extreme pressure, except perhaps in the imagination of Earth.com’s Ionescu.

Globally carbon dioxide has resulted in a general greening of the Earth with significantly improved crop production. There is good reason to believe that rising carbon dioxide concentrations have significantly contributed to West and Central Africa’s improved cocoa production, as well. There is no good reason found in botany, agronomy, or climatology – outside of climate model projections– for thinking growing conditions in the region will change for the worse.

Even the researchers themselves noted that under the various scenarios they projected, some areas in the region might see little or no change in yields going forward, others might see increased production, and still others decreases. In general, the “[r]esults from the mixed-effects models indicated that effects of climate variability on both and (with and without CO2, for all GCMs [general circulation models]) were not very strong, but that effects depended on the selected climate scenario.”

In fact, the study’s authors honestly admitted that as a result of a number of factors their findings were extremely uncertain. Among those limiting factors were the spatial scale of climate models, a lack of data availability, insufficient knowledge of potential land use changes, unknown interannual climate variability, and more. In addition, they acknowledged that the cocoa simulation model they used “has not been validated in the context of climate change or CO2 rise studies.”

These important admissions were entirely absent from Ionescu’s Earth.com story, which might lead one to believe there is more certainty in the projections than, in fact, there is.

Ionescu noted that the researchers said deforestation due to burgeoning populations expanding into tropical forests and land conversions could also result in a decline in cocoa production. This may be true, it has happened elsewhere for other forest dependent nuts and fruits when land was converted to row crops or urban expansion, but that has nothing to do with climate change.

In the end, the Earth.com story was long on alarming speculation pushing the catastrophic climate change narrative, and short on detailed analysis. The author showed no evidence of reading the report that he cites carefully and in full, or that if he did, that he understood its nuance and caveats related to its results – at least if he did, he didn’t discuss it in his story. There is also no evidence in the story that the writer checked any real-world data before asserting climate change is harming and will threaten cocoa production. That’s sloppy journalism any way you cut it.