Published on January 10, 2025 at 4:51 p.m. / Modified on January 10, 2025 at 7:37 p.m.
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Intensive cocoa monoculture, which has tripled since 1960, is showing its limits: soil erosion and climatic vulnerability.
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Agroforestry is emerging as a sustainable alternative by combining trees and crops to create favorable microclimates.
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In West Africa, this approach makes it possible to reduce deforestation (30% due to cocoa) but with lower yields.
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Experts emphasize that this method must be accompanied by public measures to be effective.
Behind a chocolate bar hide some striking figures. In the 1960s, 4.4 million hectares worldwide were dedicated to cocoa cultivation. Today, cocoa plantations cover more than 12 million hectares. In the meantime, to increase productivity, the cocoa tree has left tropical forests to settle in fields of intensive, monoculture agriculture.
But this model is running out of steam. The monoculture cocoa model, boosted with chemical inputs, is being called into question. Although it has made it possible to increase yields since the 1960s, its limits are clearly appearing today. He is accused of:
To imagine a more sustainable cocoa, farmers and researchers have joined forces to design the cocoa farming of tomorrow. Among the avenues explored, an old recipe: agroforestry. No more long lines of land where a single plantation is favored. In an agroforestry culture, trees coexist with crops. A “traditional” method, but perceived as “old-fashioned”, says Stéphane Saj, agronomist and ecologist at FiBL. The latter is a specialist in tropical agroforestry. “We were in a somewhat happy world where we applied industrial recipes to a product that is not industrial,” he explains. And for good reason, agroforestry has had a turbulent return to the fields. In the 1960s, at the height of the monoculture boom, farmers were strongly advised against adopting agroforestry in favor of monoculture.
Cocoa, 30% of deforestation in West Africa
Over the years, and in the face of criticism of monoculture, the dynamic has gradually evolved. Amanda Jousset, doctoral student at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences at the University of Neuchâtel, explains: “In response to this dynamic of expansion of monoculture, certain researchers were inspired by models of family plantations which had several plants on fairly small surfaces.”
Agroforestry has thus been adopted for different crops, including cocoa, but also coffee, among others. Promoted by the International Cocoa Organization, this cultivation method aims to improve the longevity of crops while benefiting from other ecosystem services that agroforestry can provide, such as:
- combating soil erosion;
- creating a microclimate through shade to diversify crop yields;
- as well as the development of auxiliary insects limiting the attack of certain pests.
Reread our report on Swiss agroforestry: Forest gardens are spreading in French-speaking Switzerland
Agroforestry is also seen as a solution to slow down deforestation. West Africa, where monoculture dominates, produces 70% of the world’s cocoa. However, in Ivory Coast and Ghana, the two main producing countries, cocoa is estimated to be responsible for 30% of deforestation. “Cocoa has a cycle of more or less twenty years. Therefore, it must be replanted regularly. In addition, it grows very well on freshly deforested land. So it encourages farmers to deforest to have more productivity,” illustrates Amanda Jousset.
However, this deforestation actively contributes to climate change in these regions. Climate change is also disrupting crops: fewer and fewer areas are suitable for growing cocoa and farmers are seeing the emergence of pests and diseases, which threaten cocoa trees. It is in this context that over the past twenty years agroforestry has made its way into African fields.
While an agroforestry system slows deforestation, experts agree that it is not a miracle solution. For Amanda Jousset, “this does not solve the problem of deforestation of primary forests”. The doctoral student from the University of Neuchâtel emphasizes that “in the case of cocoa, to plant agroforestry, everything is deforested”. The positive effect: “There will be more animal and plant biodiversity on this plot,” she adds. “It’s much better than a monoculture, but it doesn’t reach the level of service that a forest achieves,” adds Stéphane Saj. According to the FiBL agronomist, “an agroforestry system is not a forest. It’s a cultivated system that still has a diversity of trees or animals that come to wander around.”
Beware of the minimalist approach
In addition, the yields observed by agroforestry crops are lower than those in monoculture. And this question of profitability is sensitive. Take the example of Côte d’Ivoire: the world’s leading producer of cocoa, the bean is a vital element of the Ivorian economy. About two thirds of the working population depends on cocoa for their livelihood. Nothing to scare certain farmers in the country, who have chosen to change their cultivation method, says Stéphane Saj: “We understood that it will be difficult to produce on the same surface area, for a given year, the same quantity of cocoa than in monoculture. On the other hand, we know very well that we will be able to do it much longer thanks to an agroforestry system. “Now that we have understood that this model is much more sustainable than monoculture, we must support it,” adds Stéphane Saj.
However, this model is not a panacea and sometimes agricultural structures lack ambition: “If you put cocoa trees with coconut trees for example, it is considered agroforestry. There was a lot of criticism of this approach, it was too minimalist and it does not allow us to have a real impact on biodiversity.”
Agroforestry, to bring all its benefits, must be accompanied by public measures. In a roadmap for sustainable cocoa farming by 2032, CIRAD is pushing, for example, for greater autonomy for cocoa producers.
