Deforestation and cocoa

Cocoa yields decline as trees age and as soil fertility falls. A farmer facing that has two options: replant, which means several years with no income from that land, or extend into new land, which produces a crop sooner on more fertile soil.

Where the new land is forest, the second option is both rational and destructive. It is not a preference for clearing forest; it is the cheaper answer to an income problem, and it is why forest-protection measures that do not address replanting costs tend to displace clearing rather than stop it.

West Africa has lost a very large share of its forest cover over the past several decades, with cocoa among the significant drivers alongside logging, other agriculture and settlement. Attribution between drivers is contested and the share attributed to cocoa varies substantially between analyses.

Protected areas have been encroached on in both major producing countries, and cocoa grown inside them enters the same aggregated supply chain as everything else — which is precisely the traceability problem described elsewhere in this cluster.

Cacao is an understorey tree and grows naturally under a canopy. Full-sun cultivation gives higher yields in the short term and is harder on soil, water and biodiversity; shaded and agroforestry systems yield less per hectare and are more resilient.

Bahia's cabruca system, where cacao is planted under thinned native forest, is the best-known example of the shaded approach, and it is genuinely different from a monoculture with a few shade trees added. The trade-off is real: agroforestry is more sustainable per hectare and requires more hectares for the same volume.