In May 2017, the NGO Mighty Earth revealed the destruction of government forest reserves in Côte d’Ivoire by cocoa cultivation: out of 234, only six were still relatively intact. Deforestation outside reserves, largely due to cocoa, was also severe: 94% of Côte d’Ivoire ’s humid tropical forest was gone. Many had known what was happening. […]
  • Cocoa production in Côte d’Ivoire began in the 1950s in forests bordering Ghana, and progressively shifted west as trees were removed and soil exhausted. Côte d’Ivoire lost 217,866 hectares of protected forest from 2001 to 2014 to monocultures of it.
  • Now, the region where cocoa can be grown is shrinking due to climate and rainfall patterns: agroforestry is the sole way ensure that it can continue as the mainstay crop of the economies of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, so it’s time to ‘go big’ on implementing it widely.
  • Agroforestry cools the microclimates on farms and increases climate resiliency and biodiversity, but is a complex, time consuming technique that varies by region.
  • Careful selection of tree species and spacing are critical to maximize yields, which is a key problem to solve toward wider adoption of agroforestry-grown chocolate.

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