Climate change poses a major well-known risk to cacao production. But a new study finds that low pollination is also limiting yields in producing countries — a finding that could offer hope to a threatened industry. Researchers suggest that actively creating conditions in which natural pollinators thrive on cacao farms could help farmers buffer against increasing temperatures, improve productivity and boost livelihoods.

An international group of researchers replicated hand-pollination trials on cacao trees at 26 sites in Brazil, Indonesia and Ghana, simultaneously analyzing soil samples, local temperature data and a range of other measurements. They found that pollinating cacao trees across these different countries and conditions resulted in a 20% increase in yields, indicating that a lack of natural pollination is holding back farm output. Their study was published this month in the journal Communications Earth & Environment.

Higher temperatures played an especially large role in limiting farm productivity. Strikingly, on one site where temperatures were up to 7° Celsius (12.6° Fahrenheit) warmer than the coolest site, cacao trees had 20-30% lower yields.

That “yield drop is massive from the point of view of a farmer,” says Tonya Lander, first author on the paper and a stipendiary lecturer in biology at the University of Oxford. Though the study frames this productivity loss in terms of climate change sensitivity, rising temperatures are key. The research “implies that as temperature goes up, yield is likely to go down,” Lander notes.

The new study comes against the backdrop of a recent report by Climate Central finding that climate change over the past decade has been responsible for at least three weeks every year above 32°C (89.6°F) during the primary cacao growing season in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, pushing temperatures beyond the “optimal” range for cacao plants. Together, the two African countries account for around two-thirds of the world’s cacao supply. Last year cacao prices skyrocketed, hitting a new record, with climate change a major factor hammering farmers’ yields and consumers’ wallets.

“The report from Climate Central is exactly in line with our own findings,” Lander says. “The combined message is that temperatures are rising during the part of the year that cacao trees are most sensitive, which is likely to cause a decrease in cocoa yield.”

Despite this grim outlook, the new study’s findings offer hopeful solutions for farmers and chocolate lovers: “What we’re saying is it looks like you can do management [practices] to increase the pollinators in your plantation,” she explains, and that could enhance biodiversity, build climate resilience and boost cacao yields.

Helping pollinators pollinate

Those management practices include several low-tech, low-budget methods to aid the tiny midges that are cacao’s predominant pollinators, Lander says. For example, something as simple as an increase in leaf litter on farms can offer better propagation conditions for insect eggs and larvae. So can increasing the density of cacao tree plantings, using taller trees to shade the crop and limiting agrochemical usage.

“The likelihood is that [utilizing these techniques] you’ll get more pollinators, more pollination and then more pods,” Lander says.

These methods have add-on benefits. An increase in leaf litter, for example, not only provides pollinator habitat, it also helps cool soils, maintain moisture and increase organic content, all beneficial to soil health and fertility. “That is one thing that we are saying: Just leave some [leaf litter] and it’s useful!” Lander urges.

Crucially, while the research team used hand-pollination as a means of closely monitoring data in the study, they don’t advocate this practice on cacao farms. That’s due to the risk of child labor, a problem rife on cacao farms in major producing nations like Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. Hand-pollination is “also inherently less efficient and more expensive than just doing these minor adjustments to increase pollinator abundance,” Lander explains. “You’re also likely to get knock-on biodiversity benefits from some of [the study’s] suggested management interventions.”

One curious finding: Even though cacao originated in Latin America, it appears that natural pollinators in Ghana pollinate the plants more. “What I expected was that Brazil would have the highest natural pollination,” Lander says. But that wasn’t the case. Though tricky to calculate, the team assessed that natural pollination was 11.1% in Indonesia, 12.2% in Brazil, and 27.1% in Ghana. “It looks like the pollinators in Ghana are more abundant and more efficient,” she says.

Conserving forests to boost cacao productivity

The recommendations made by Lander and her team “offer an excellent model of best practices to promote a more profitable and sustainable cocoa industry in the future,” say Gustavo Júnior Araújo and Tereza Cristina Giannini, both researchers at the Vale Institute of Technology in Brazil, neither of whom were involved in the study.

Higher future productivity also requires a shift away from monocropping, the cultivation method now dominant in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire — an approach that limits natural pollination and which is more vulnerable to climate change. A move away from agroforestry to monocropping is already underway in some parts of Brazil, they say, which could lead to similar problems as those experienced in West Africa.

Their own recent research on Brazil cacao farms, based on data from the Amazon and Atlantic Forest biomes, adds a further recommendation: Maintain natural forest near farms to boost cacao productivity.

“Our own study showed that cocoa crops tend to be more productive when located in areas with greater forest availability,” they wrote in an email to Mongabay. “These environments not only house pollinators but also other beneficial groups for production, such as pest control agents and organisms that contribute to nutrient cycling, highlighting the importance of forest conservation for cocoa production.”

Though monoculture methods may provide high yields, that approach often depends on agrochemicals and may require manual pollination, both costly and problematic, they say. All in all, practicing low-tech, low-cost agroforestry principles, coupled with conservation of forest cover in cacao-growing areas, can improve biodiversity, water conservation and climate regulation.

“Forest conservation is a great ally of cocoa production, as municipalities that conserve or restore forest areas show higher profitability in their crops,” they wrote. “This reinforces the idea that agriculture and conservation can and should coexist.”

The cacao industry is built on the work of an estimated 5.5 million smallholder farmers, and it is they and their families who stand to lose the most as climate change ravages their crops. Lander hopes her team’s findings ultimately help maintain their well-being and livelihoods “by increasing the quantity and stability of cocoa yield through habitat-enhancing, biodiversity-centred, climate-resilient, diversified agriculture.”

Banner image: Smallholder cacao farmers at work in Brazil. There are an estimated 5.5 million farmers growing cacao worldwide, and their livelihoods are being seriously impacted by soaring temperatures due to climate change and decreasing crop yields. Image by Patrick H. Böttger.

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Citations:

Lander, T. A., Atta-Boateng, A., Toledo-Hernández, M., Wood, A., Malhi, Y., Solé, M., … Wanger, T. C. (2025). Global chocolate supply is limited by low pollination and high temperatures. Communications Earth & Environment, 6(1). doi:10.1038/s43247-025-02072-z

Araújo, G. J., Martello, F., Sabino, W. O., Andrade, T. O., Costa, L., Teixeira, J. S., … Carvalheiro, L. G. (2022). Tropical forests and cocoa production: Synergies and threats in the chocolate market. SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.4089132

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