Drought is not the only climate challenge facing cocoa farmers.
Drought is not the only climate challenge facing cocoa farmers. Better warnings before extreme rains could help them protect their harvests.
Cocoa farmers in West Africa cannot stop intense, crop-damaging downpours. But they may be able to anticipate the risk and prepare, protecting both their livelihoods and their plants, the source of one of the world’s most beloved foods.
Scientists at Harvard and the University of Ghana say that large-scale weather patterns could make some threats to cocoa harvests predictable months in advance, giving farmers time to act. Cocoa trees live for decades and a successful harvest depends on a long sequence of flowering, pollination, and pod development. Too little or too much rain at the wrong moment can damage the crop for the rest of the season.
“Drought is a real threat to cocoa, and that’s well established. What has not been as well articulated is the other extreme of too much rain. Heavy rain arriving while the trees are flowering – or that favors the spread of fungal disease during flowering and early pod development – turns out to matter just as much,” said Anna Lea Albright, who led the research as a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment.
Read More: Harvard University
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