Let's talk about Cocoa Pollinators
The fact that most of us love chocolate is evident from the size of the chocolate industry, which was estimated at 137 Billion U.S. dollars in 2020 globally. However, cocoa farmers receive on average 7% of the final price of a chocolate bar. The cocoa industry faces a number of challenges, including issues with child labor and forced labour, low wages for cocoa farmers, and myriad environmental issues such as deforestation and climate change. Even though these issues have been known for a while, most efforts tend to fall short, partially due to our myopic views. Yet, there are other pressing issues that are yet largely ignored, such the decline in pollinator abundance of the cocoa tree, which is assumed to be a consequence of conventional farming practices such as convetional full-sun, monocropped, pesticide drenched farms we find today (even on certified farms).
Ignoring the needs of the trees and the insects that pollinate the cocoa flowers could lead to future social and economic issues. Here I would like to highlight the cocoa pollinator, a tiny fly that is essential to the pollination of the cocoa flower but laregely neglected in most conversations related to sustainable cocoa farming. If we had to include the perspective of the tiny midget and create habitats that are pollinator friendly, cocoa farms would look radically different than conventional farms today.
Our sustainability agenda and practices would greatly vary if we considered a multispecies perspective.
Take a look at the brief presentation below.
