Climate change poses a major well-known risk to cacao production. But a new study finds that low pollination is also limiting yields in producing countries — a finding that could offer hope to a threatened industry. Researchers suggest that actively creating conditions in which natural pollinators thrive on cacao farms could help farmers buffer against increasing temperatures, improve productivity and boost livelihoods. An international group of researchers replicated hand-pollination trials on cacao trees at 26 sites in Brazil, Indonesia and Ghana, simultaneously analyzing soil samples, local temperature data and a range of other measurements. They found that pollinating cacao trees across these different countries and conditions resulted in a 20% increase in yields, indicating that a lack of natural pollination is holding back farm output. Their study was published this month in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. Higher temperatures played an especially large role in limiting farm productivity. Strikingly, on one site where temperatures were up to 7° Celsius (12.6° Fahrenheit) warmer than the coolest site, cacao trees had 20-30% lower yields. That “yield drop is massive from the point of view of a farmer,” says Tonya Lander, first author on the paper and a stipendiary lecturer in biology at the University of Oxford. Though the study frames this productivity loss in terms of climate change sensitivity, rising temperatures are key. The research “implies that as temperature goes up, yield is likely to go down,” Lander notes. The new study comes against the backdrop of a recent report by…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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