This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Cocoa farmers in West Africa cannot stop intense downpours from damaging their crops. But they may be able to anticipate the risk and prepare, protecting both their livelihoods and their plants, the source of one of the world's most beloved foods.
Scientists at Harvard and the University of Ghana say that large-scale weather patterns could make some threats to cocoa harvests predictable months in advance, giving farmers time to act. Cocoa trees live for decades, and a successful harvest depends on a long sequence of flowering, pollination and pod development. Too little or too much rain at the wrong moment can damage the crop for the rest of the season.
The findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Drought is a real threat to cocoa, and that's well established. What has not been as well articulated is the other extreme of too much rain.
Heavy rain that arrives while the trees are flowering—or favors the spread of fungal disease during flowering and early pod development—turns out to matter just as much," said Anna Lea Albright, who led the research as a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment. "In Ghana, we found that excess rain during the wet season, together with dry-season drought, explains about two-thirds of the year-to-year swings in the cocoa harvest." The resulting price volatility—raw cocoa prices tripled in 2024—is hitting chocolate lovers, showing up in higher prices, smaller bars or reformulated products. Because cocoa is especially vulnerable at certain stages of its growth cycle, adaptation must be precise.
Disease control can be timed around periods of heavy rain, especially if forecasts can provide enough time to prepare—a capacity that the team is currently working to develop. "We hope the findings will help reduce future crop damage, possibly by encouraging more canopy cover to shield cocoa flowers from large raindrops or by retaining more leaf litter to prevent splashes that transmit infection from soil to cocoa pods," said senior author Peter Huybers, chair of Harvard's Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Farmers have long worried about drought, and previous studies have warned that rising temperatures could make some cocoa-growing areas less suitable.
But this study finds that average rainfall and average temperatures overlook the damage caused by short, intense bursts of rain. In Ghana, the most damaging rains appear during the April–June wet season, when cocoa trees are flowering and young pods are beginning to form. Later, during the November–February dry period, too little rain can hurt the crop as pods continue to develop.
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