Daniel, Ghanaian cocoa farmer

Cocoa, the main ingredient in chocolate, recently reached the highest price on the global commodities market seen in 47 years. But higher prices don’t always mean higher incomes for cocoa farmers like Daniel Amponsah.

About five million farming households depend on cocoa as a cash crop, and mounting crises are threatening their livelihoods. Chronic underpayment, climate change and increasing production costs are making it harder for farmers to make a living off their yields.

Daniel is one of them. He has been growing cocoa for 35 years in Goaso, Ghana and has decades of experience adapting to challenges. Twelve years ago, he was struggling to support his family with the income from his cocoa crop. After learning about Fairtrade, he spearheaded an effort to organize the farmers in his town into small-scale farming organization, or a cooperative.

Being part of a cooperative helps farmers access new markets and increase their profits by trading with customers seeking large quantities of cocoa. There are a range of other benefits, including access to tools, fertilizers, financing and professional development opportunities.

As a leader of Asunafo North, Daniel delivered presentations about climate change and environmentally friendly farming practices at several international conferences.

Daniel says climate change is largely to blame for the current shortage that’s driven prices so high. Hotter, drier weather is taking its toll on the trees and the fruit that encases the beans, which both thrive in humidity. The changing weather patterns are also increasing the occurrence of pests and crop diseases, like a fungal disease called black pod and swollen shoot virus. When heat shrivels the pods or diseases spread, farmers must take expensive actions – like investing in more labor to hasten irrigation or fungicides and insecticides – to save their cocoa.

Pods that make it to harvest have a long way to go before resembling anything close to the chocolate bars American shoppers buy. Pods must be split to remove the fruit-encased beans, which then must be fermented, dried and packaged into sacks for transport. Once sold to a chocolate company, the beans will go through another multi-step process to become chocolate.

In the face of climate change, a world without chocolate is possible. Shortages will continue if action is not taken to address the mounting crises farmers face.

The good news is that Daniel and his fellow farmers are seasoned stewards of the land and know what needs to happen at the farm level to mitigate the impacts of climate-related agricultural issues.

Growing cocoa takes an extraordinary amount of labor and care. It also takes money – enough money for farmers to resolve today’s problems and plan for the future. So, use your purchasing power. Show up for small-scale farmers like Daniel. Choose Fairtrade!