What fate awaits cocoa farmers?

I recently had a conversation with the representative of a Silicon Valley start-up.

They contacted me after seeing my work on cocoa agroforestry in Ghana.

It was interesting to hear about the company’s vision and innovation for driving it. The company’s unique value proposition is using biotechnology to culture and mass-produce cocoa in the lab.

They argued this is the future of sustainable cocoa production. According to them, the approach would eliminate child labour, deforestation and other sustainability challenges in the cocoa sector.

All that remained for the company, I sensed, was building partnerships to accelerate the social acceptance of lab-grown cocoa, while currently leveraging the logistics, patents and licenses to produce at scale.

Reasonable

The company’s plan seems reasonable, even alluring given the fine mess the cocoa sector has been experiencing in recent years. Too many issues are working against the Ghanaian cocoa farmer lately: poor productivity, galamsey invasion, the swollen shoot disease galore, unfair prices, late payments etc.

Child labour is in a league of its own; I do not subscribe to many Western actors’ views on the matter given the extended periods I have spent in cocoa-growing communities, we can debate this in a different piece.

Is biotechnology the missing link to sustainable cocoa production? What fate awaits traditional cocoa farmers? These are some of the questions I have been pondering since my conversation with the biotech firm representative.

Will growing cocoa in the lab address sustainability challenges associated with cocoa production in Ghana? I don’t think so for at least two reasons.

First, Ghana’s most recent Agriculture Census suggests that growing cocoa provides livelihoods directly to over 620,000 farmers. If one considers the dependants of these farmers, I reckon the sector caters to over 2.5 million Ghanaians.

What will become of these farmers and their dependants when we fuel the narrative of growing cocoa in the lab under the rubric of addressing environmental sustainability?

Second, historical cocoa grinding figures indicate that world cocoa prices fluctuate considerably based on stakeholders’ expectations about cocoa supply from farmers in West Africa.

Currently, cocoa prices are at historic highs because of a downturn in supply over the last couple of years. It is logical to assume that using lab-grown options to jack up cocoa supply risks pushing prices to unsustainable levels.

Cocoa farmers and their dependents are the most likely to suffer from any price downturn. Do we not risk subsisting present problems in cocoa with others and perhaps more challenging alternatives?

Lab-grown

The only (groups of) people likely to benefit from any shift towards lab-grown cocoa are their initiators, traders, multinational chocolate companies and the venture capitalists backing them.

Given all the evidence of how inequality has spiralled out of control globally, do we want to risk undercutting cocoa farmers to make billionaires of a few individuals only for them to turn around later on and implement a couple of “charity programmes” in the name of finding catharsis?

I will not write about the potential health risks of lab-grown cocoa; instead, I will leave that to health experts and others who are more qualified. I believe cocoa – or “Food of Gods” as it is aptly named – is best cultivated in the soil, not in Petri dishes or bioreactors.

Cocoa is more than a commodity. Cocoa is families and their dependents. Cocoa is people and their culture. Cocoa stands for nations and their heritage.
Cocoa sector stakeholders must assert these narratives clearly and vigorously if cocoa farmers are to have a decent place in the future.

We must ensure that cocoa farmers are not pushed to the margins or left behind by the refinement of technology that promises sustainability but risks creating far greater social problems.

It is within our power to make the fate of the cocoa farmer what it needs: to be prosperous, resilient, and sustainable.

The writer is a Researcher,
Land, Society and Governance Group, Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery,
University of Oxford, UK;
Partnership for Agriculture, Conservation and Transformation