Recently, we’ve seen the undeniable effects of climate change on our weather, with temperatures reaching the highest in Earth’s history this past July. Here in Florida, hurricane season arrives increasingly earlier and with greater intensity.
But climate change is also leaving its mark in a more unexpected place: our dessert plates. According to numerous experts and news reports, extreme weather is severely disrupting the conditions needed to produce cocoa, a vital ingredient in chocolate. As cultivation becomes more difficult, prices soar. And for many cocoa farmers, it significantly threatens their livelihoods.
Jeffrey Chanton
Photo Courtesy Of Florida State University
The world’s largest cocoa producers, Ivory Coast and Ghana, are grappling with extreme weather events, including heavy rainfall that threatens cacao trees and bean crops. “All agriculture thrives best under stable, predictable conditions,” explains Jeffrey Chanton, professor of oceanography in the Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science at Florida State University. “With global warming, temperature increases cause stress on the plants because they’re used to different habitats. It also increases variability, making it colder and hotter. So there are more spikes in temperature and also in rainfall. We’re having what used to be 50-year floods every year in some places. And also droughts. So the rainfall is more episodic and then you have long periods without rainfall.” As a result, cacao farmers who rely on healthy crop production are challenged to survive.
Isabel Garcia Nevett
Photo courtesy Of Garcia Nevett Chocolatier
“Cacao trees need specific conditions, like consistent rainfall, warm temperatures and humidity,” adds Isabel Garcia Nevett, owner of Garcia Nevett Chocolatier de Miami. “Climate change disrupts these conditions. It also affects the quality of beans produced. West Africa has been hit hardest.” Some farmers receive assistance from government subsidies or nonprofits, but as The New York Times reported in July, many still struggle to afford the additional labor and materials required to produce cocoa in this challenging climate.
Tougher farming conditions translate into disrupted supply chains. In May, Bloomberg reported that in Ghana, traders have experienced delivery delays, making cacao scarcer and, consequently, more expensive. Brazil, once a major cocoa supplier, has seen its industry devastated by the spread of an abnormal tree growth called Witches’ Broom — also linked to climate variables — that has been ravaging the country’s cacao industry for decades, destroying as much as 75% of the country’s production.
In recent years, other countries like Malaysia, Madagascar and Vietnam have invested in cacao production, but they’ve yet to fully pick up the slack due to the time it takes for cacao trees, on average five to 10 years, to start yielding quality beans.
If all this sounds like a faraway problem, think again. For starters, it already has affected us at the candy store. In March, cocoa prices reached $10,080 per metric ton, a 138% increase, according to CNBC. Less than a year ago, that number was $3,692. Major brands like Hershey’s, Nestlé and Mondelez, the owner of Cadbury, have struggled to handle surging costs, offsetting them with price increases. That translates to consumers paying more for everything from Kit Kat bars to Easter bunnies. As we approach 2025, Hershey’s is already predicting that scarcity and rising costs will continue to drive prices up.
Witches' Broom can attack cacao tree pods, destroying the valuable beans inside
Closer to home, independent businesses also feel the pinch, ambivalent about raising their rates to maintain profit while not losing consumers. “Our costs have gone up tremendously, but you can’t simply pass that down to your clients,” says Joseph Marmor, president of Le Chocolatier Fine Handmade Chocolate in North Miami Beach. “So we’ve taken our lump. We did finally raise prices because it was just getting too hard. You’re going to see a lot more of that because of the volatility of the cocoa market. Companies like Hershey’s can weather the storm a lot better than small guys like us.” Local restaurants are equally challenged. “Everyone’s behind the eight ball because of the increase in prices of ingredients. The budget for any restaurant includes food costs. It’s making it harder for all of us to eke out a profit.” Marmor remains hopeful that prices will stabilize as the newer cocoa-producing countries ramp up their exportation.
Garcia Nevett is hopeful as well. “As long as there are severe changes to weather patterns in West Africa, we can expect more price fluctuations and scarcity. Maybe the cacao-growing countries in Latin America will benefit as more companies try to diversify where they’re getting it from.”
No matter where they source it, Marmor adds that ensuring it is fair trade is essential. “Fair trade means they’re certified. It means the farmer gets enough money to survive and make a profit and has been inspected to make sure children aren’t being taken advantage of.”
Joseph Marmor
Even in the most ideal conditions, however, climate change impacts more than chocolate’s pricing — it also influences its quality and taste. Temperature fluctuations during cocoa bean growth affect its taste, yielding potentially erratic and inconsistent flavors. “The way the cocoa industry might deal with this is by roasting the beans to a really high temperature to sort of eliminate all discrepancies,” Yasmin Tang, a food, health and science reporter for The Atlantic, recently remarked on NPR’s “Short Wave” podcast. “But it might also get rid of a lot of the complexity in the beans, resulting in maybe more boring, less interesting chocolate.”
Garcia Nevett echoes that sentiment, saying, “We’d like to see greater emphasis on places developing more resilient varieties of cacao that produce good quality chocolate because fine cacao is usually more fragile and prone to disease and weather-related mishaps.”
However, the most perilous aspect of climate change in the chocolate industry isn’t the inconvenience to our wallets or taste buds — it’s about the farmers and families who depend on cocoa production to live. When livelihoods collapse, entire communities crumble, driving an increase in poverty. We’re already seeing it in real time. According to a study cited by the World Economic Forum, 58% of cocoa farmers in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana live below the extreme poverty line, and 90% do not meet their definition of earning a living income.
Is it too late to change course? “Cutting fossil fuel emissions and methane would be a start,” says Chanton. “Methane would be a great place to crack down.” Sources of fossil fuel and methane include coal, oil and gas as well as landfills and waste burning. Hopefully, we’re on our way. A Global Methane Pledge was reached at the United Nations Climate Summit in late 2023 by 50 oil and gas companies to take steps that would start dramatically reducing fossil fuel burning and methane emissions to “near zero” by 2030. The key, according to John Kerry, a U.S. climate envoy who attended the summit: “We got people to do things they haven’t done before.”
