That sweet, mouth- watering, smooth dessert that everyone in the world adores. Eaten in a bar of chocolate from a kiosk or in a five-star restaurant in the form of a dessert. It is crazy to think about it but 7 billion kilograms of chocolate a year gets consumed in our planet…7 billion! Sadly enough, one of the world’s favourite sweet treats has been put into various ‘top ten worst foods for our environment’. But why?
What is growing cocoa doing to our planet?
Cocoa trees are mostly grown in west Africa. The trees need an equatorial climate, which means heavy rainfall, high humidity, and uniform temperatures. Due to climate change, there has been a lot of dryness and drought eras and extreme weather temperatures. All of these do not correspond to the conditions that cocoa trees need.
Now, the farming issues are a problem in this sector. As it happens to various farmers, there is the overuse or misuse of pesticides. There are harmful chemicals in the pesticide, that get washed of when the plants are irrigated. These get washed off into streams, lakes, and rivers. This harms the environment and kills wildlife. Also, the chemicals harm the soil which means it cannot work to its full capacity. Another issue is the fact that farmers do not use the same areas to replant cocoa trees. Deforestation is a big problem, especially in the Ivory coast. They do this due to the high demand of cocoa in the past years. They need to produce so much of it in so little time this causes poor farming and therefore the areas cannot be used anymore. Leading to deforestation.
Just to put it into perspective. 1 kilogram of chocolate needs around 25 pods. Each pod has 30- 50 cocoa beans, therefore around 800 cocoa beans are needed. Guess how many pods are in one cocoa tree? Approximately 20-30. So, what does all this mean? One tree produces one kilogram of cocoa powder.
So, does this mean you can’t eat chocolate anymore?
This whole blog post is not to tell you all that you must stop eating chocolate this instance, but to tell you all about better solutions. These facts that I have listed are all done mainly by big chain corporates. They need a lot of cocoa so they give in to poor farming. However, there are companies that use shade growing. This phenomenon is farming a lot of different products in the same area. The plants take in nutrients from the soil and some release nutrients into it. It forms a sort of cycle, where all the plants help each other out. Less pesticides are needed, as there is better yield product due to all the nutrients the soil has. Lastly, there is less deforestation as the same areas can be used due to no poor farming being held.
So, when you want this delicious, sweet treat, consider buying it from smaller brands that use shade farming instead of the cheap chocolate big companies make.
https://www.worldwildlife.org/magazine/issues/spring-2017/articles/bittersweet-chocolate-simpact-on-the-environment
https://www.kakaoplattform.ch/about-cocoa/challenges-in-the-cocoa-sector
Chocolate Is One of the Most Damaging Foods to the Environment—Here’s Why
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