Post by account_disabled on Mar 12, 2024 23:28:04 GMT -8
Jalil, the farmer from Palopo, Sulawesi, says he was surrounded by other cacao plantations until a few years ago. But much like what Ordinado has seen in Quezon, many neighboring farmers have cut down their cacao trees and converted to other crops, like rice or oil palm. At the local cacao processor, Gudang 999, Fahmi, the branch manager, buys beans from farmers and dries them before sending them off to a factory in the provincial capital, Makassar, where they are turned into cacao butter by major multinationals such as Cargill and Singapore-based agribusiness giant Olam International. He confirms the dire diagnosis. “We get 70 percent less cacao than a few years ago,” said Fahmi. “Used to be three tons a day, now just one.” There’s a reason for this. At his farm, Jalil quickly identifies a sickened fruit, tearing it from the branch and with a quick jab with his machete, opening it up for me and tearing out the mushy, white seeds. “See, it’s diseased. We have to throw it away.” Because Sulawesi’s dry seasons have been getting hotter due to climate change, plant diseases can spread more easily in lowland-regions like Palopo. According to experts, this is a growing challenge globally.
Many cocoa farmers are on the front lines of the climate crisis, leaving them vulnerable to drought, pests, and diseases that can decimate a harvest,” said Kerry Daroci, cocoa sector lead at the nonprofit Rainforest Alliance. A man’s hands hold an opened cacao fruit with mushy, white seeds. Jalil shows the author a diseased cacao fruit. Nithin Coca Beyond heat, the more frequent floods in the rainy season are also making cacao farming more difficult. Four years ago, heavy rains destroyed nearly half of Jalil’s harvest. “If flooded, cacao BYB Directory can die,” said Jalil. He points to the rice paddies of his neighbors, a crop less susceptible to flooding and supported by a government program that expanded irrigation. “That’s why they switched.” According to Fahmi, all across Sulawesi’s cacao-growing regions, the combination of low prices, increased rain and heat, and government incentives to expand irrigation and promote the growing of staple crops are leading many farmers to do as Jalil’s neighbors did: switch to rice or, in West Sulawesi, oil palm. In West Africa, too, climate change is creating uncertainty over the future availability of cheap cacao butter.
Ghana, the world’s second largest producer, saw widespread drought in 2022, which, according to the cacao consultancy Equipoise, led to a more than 30 percent shortfall in production. This has started to impact global cacao prices, which have jumped by about 15 percent since mid-2022, though that has not yet trickled down to farmers like Jalil. So far, the fall in production hasn’t hurt the plant-based meat industry, partly because other users of coconut oil and cacao butter have been able to more easily replace it with alternatives like palm, sunflower, or rapeseed oil. But for Beyond and Impossible’s need for an oil that behaves like animal fat, as well as the desire to avoid using artificial or lab-based alternatives that might put off consumers, coconut oil and cacao butter remain essential. Impossible and Beyond haven’t invested in sustainability tracing Even as the plant-based meat companies grapple with the challenge of finding adequate supplies, environmentalists and other observers see a broader sustainability challenge as the demand for the products increases. “The spike in demand for coconut as a plant-based fat input could ... create negative consequences if no alternative fat sources are concurrently developed,” said Mirte Gosker, managing director of the Good Food Institute’s Asia-Pacific division. One concern is that if there’s a surge in demand for cacao butter for plant-based meat, and if Indonesian cacao butter production continues to fall, companies may be forced to source more from West Africa.
Many cocoa farmers are on the front lines of the climate crisis, leaving them vulnerable to drought, pests, and diseases that can decimate a harvest,” said Kerry Daroci, cocoa sector lead at the nonprofit Rainforest Alliance. A man’s hands hold an opened cacao fruit with mushy, white seeds. Jalil shows the author a diseased cacao fruit. Nithin Coca Beyond heat, the more frequent floods in the rainy season are also making cacao farming more difficult. Four years ago, heavy rains destroyed nearly half of Jalil’s harvest. “If flooded, cacao BYB Directory can die,” said Jalil. He points to the rice paddies of his neighbors, a crop less susceptible to flooding and supported by a government program that expanded irrigation. “That’s why they switched.” According to Fahmi, all across Sulawesi’s cacao-growing regions, the combination of low prices, increased rain and heat, and government incentives to expand irrigation and promote the growing of staple crops are leading many farmers to do as Jalil’s neighbors did: switch to rice or, in West Sulawesi, oil palm. In West Africa, too, climate change is creating uncertainty over the future availability of cheap cacao butter.
Ghana, the world’s second largest producer, saw widespread drought in 2022, which, according to the cacao consultancy Equipoise, led to a more than 30 percent shortfall in production. This has started to impact global cacao prices, which have jumped by about 15 percent since mid-2022, though that has not yet trickled down to farmers like Jalil. So far, the fall in production hasn’t hurt the plant-based meat industry, partly because other users of coconut oil and cacao butter have been able to more easily replace it with alternatives like palm, sunflower, or rapeseed oil. But for Beyond and Impossible’s need for an oil that behaves like animal fat, as well as the desire to avoid using artificial or lab-based alternatives that might put off consumers, coconut oil and cacao butter remain essential. Impossible and Beyond haven’t invested in sustainability tracing Even as the plant-based meat companies grapple with the challenge of finding adequate supplies, environmentalists and other observers see a broader sustainability challenge as the demand for the products increases. “The spike in demand for coconut as a plant-based fat input could ... create negative consequences if no alternative fat sources are concurrently developed,” said Mirte Gosker, managing director of the Good Food Institute’s Asia-Pacific division. One concern is that if there’s a surge in demand for cacao butter for plant-based meat, and if Indonesian cacao butter production continues to fall, companies may be forced to source more from West Africa.