Climate change and a newly unleashed ‘gold rush’ in African growing areas are not only threatening large parts of cultivated areas, but are also causing raw cocoa prices to skyrocket. This development also threatens the survival of many cocoa farmers.
Despite the price increases, cocoa farmers and their families in Ghana and Ivory Coast face major challenges, explains Fairtrade Austria director Hartwig Kirner after a trip to Ghana accompanied by local media. “Fluctuating crop yields due to extreme weather conditions and sharply rising production and living costs are pushing many families in this situation into poverty.” Cost-driving factors include unfavorable exchange rate developments, but also transport and energy. Many would lose perspective. This raises the question of how demand will be met in the future. Because the global demand for cocoa is increasing.
Highly fluctuating crop yields
After Kirner got a sense of the situation on the ground, the Fairtrade representative said that “the problem of highly fluctuating crop yields of 50 percent or more per year has been repeatedly brought to our attention.” “How is a cooperative, let alone an individual family, supposed to save financial resources to plant new cocoa trees or invest in an irrigation system?”
Illegal gold mining with devastating consequences
Added to this is the temptation of short-term financial gain through illegal gold mining. “The consequences are devastating. Cocoa fields, as well as protected forests, have been and are being sacrificed to gold mining, which makes money in the short term, but in the long term the soil and the entire environment are rendered unusable for generations,” says Kirner. “This makes it extremely difficult to get the younger generation excited about working in the cocoa fields so that they can continue their parents’ businesses in the future.” Naturally, Kirner calls on chocolate lovers to ensure that they purchase fair trade chocolate when purchasing.
Zotter: “Chocolate will never be so cheap again”
When raw cocoa recently reached new record prices in April/Mail, Styrian chocolatier Josef Zotter told the “Krone”: “Chocolate will never be as cheap as it once was. I estimate that conventional chocolate will be a third more expensive.” The reasons he cited were, on the one hand, failed harvests, also due to climate change, and on the other hand a lack of workers because it mainly concerns young people. The work on the plantations is moving to the cities in large numbers. The entrepreneur also mentioned speculators.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
