{"id":229305,"date":"2022-11-15T13:50:21","date_gmt":"2022-11-15T12:50:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=229305"},"modified":"2022-11-15T13:50:23","modified_gmt":"2022-11-15T12:50:23","slug":"wrong-abc-news-climate-change-isnt-threatening-cocoa-bean-production","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=229305","title":{"rendered":"Wrong, ABC News, Climate Change Isn\u2019t Threatening Cocoa Bean Production"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A Google news search for the term \u201cclimate change\u201d today discovered a story published by ABC News which claims climate change is threatening cocoa bean production. This is false. Similar to the results for most other crops, cocoa bean production has been increasing, indeed, often setting new records amid the modest warming of the past 30 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the story on ABC News, titled \u201cCocoa farmers fear climate change lowering crop productio<\/a>n,\u201d Associated Press reporter Hilaire Zon links climate change to this year\u2019s sporadic rainfall in the Ivory Coast (Cote d\u2019Ivorie). Small farms in the Ivory Coast produce almost half of the world\u2019s cocoa beans. The farmers that Zon interviewed expressed concern climate change may make rainfall less predictable making it harder to produce cocoa. Zon writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more than 40 years, Jean Baptiste Saleyo has farmed cocoa on several acres of his family\u2019s land in Ivory Coast, a West African nation that produces almost half the world\u2019s supply of the raw ingredient used in chocolate bars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this year Saleyo says the rains have become unpredictable, and he fears his crop could be yet another victim of climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen it should have rained, it didn\u2019t, it didn\u2019t rain,\u201d Saleyo said as he inspected the ripeness of one of his cocoa pods. \u201cIt\u2019s raining now, but it\u2019s already too late.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Farming is always dependent on the weather and, ask any farmer, the weather is fickle\u2014weather patterns are not consistent each year. Droughts come and go, and a single year\u2019s \u201cunpredictable\u201d rainfall is not an indication of climate change. As pointed out at\u00a0Climate Realism<\/em>\u00a0in multiple articles,\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0here<\/a>, for instance, weather is not climate, and it is illegitimate to conflate them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just as there is no evidence the weather in Ivory Coast this year has been altered by climate change, there is also no evidence that climate change is hampering cocoa bean production. Indeed, real-world data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)<\/a> shows that cocoa bean production grew considerably between 1990 and 2020, even as the earth warmed modestly, setting new records for production multiple times in the Ivory Coast and globally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FAO data show that between 1990 and 2020:<\/p>\n\n\n\n