Justin Rowlatt’s Easter Egg

By Paul Homewood

h/t Joe Public

Today’s misinformation from Justin Rowlatt:

 

You may have noticed that Easter eggs are more expensive this year.

But did you know that climate change is one of the reasons?

Most chocolate is made from cocoa grown in West Africa, but a humid heatwave has blasted the crops and massively cut yields.

Experts say that human-induced climate change has made the extreme heat 10 times more likely.

Which? found some popular eggs have risen in price by 50% or more.

The shortage of cocoa resulting from the heatwave has seen prices soar to almost $8,500 (£6,700) a tonne this week.

Cocoa trees are particularly vulnerable to changes in the climate. They only grow in a narrow band of about 20 degrees latitude around the Equator.

Most global production is concentrated in West Africa. In 2023, 58m kilogrammes of cocoa beans worth £127m were imported to the UK from Ivory Coast and Ghana with 85% of the UK’s cocoa beans sourced from Ivory Coast.

However, severe drought conditions have hit the West Africa region since February this year.

This has been caused by temperatures that soared above 40C, breaking records in countries including the Ivory Coast and Ghana.

It was these exceptionally high temperatures that the World Weather Attribution group, based at Imperial College London, found were made 10 times more likely by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.

Their study found that unless the world quickly reduces fossil fuel use, West Africa will experience similar heatwaves about every two years.

"There were reports from farmers in Ivory Coast that the heat weakened the cocoa crop," according to one of the authors of the study, Izadine Pinto, from the University of Cape Town.

He said the high temperatures increased the rate of evaporation, leaving the crops without sufficient moisture.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68619912

I’m not sure how you can have a humid drought, but this is Rowlatt we are talking about, who has no interest in actual facts!

Maybe somebody ought to tell him that weather attribution models are just that, models, and they should not be confused with the real world.

But cocoa prices have always been notoriously volatile, in large part due to variations in weather. 2016/17, for instance was a bumper harvest, and prices dropped through the floor:

https://www.kakaoplattform.ch/about-cocoa/cocoa-facts-and-figures

But over time, cocoa production has been steadily increasing, making a nonsense of Rowlatt’s climate doom.

But there are fundamental problems in West Africa, and they have nothing to do with climate change, as Dr Michael Odijie, an economist who specialises in Africa affairs, points out:

A number of long-term structural issues have beset cocoa farming in west Africa for decades. They shouldn’t be overshadowed by concerns with short-term problems.

The first is the declining availability of forest land and its connection to increasing production costs.

Over the last two decades, depletion of forest land has led farmers to turn to grasslands for replanting cocoa plants. This requires extensive land preparation, regular weeding around the cocoa trees, pruning, and the application of fertilisers and pesticides. What’s more, the plants are highly susceptible to disease. All these things result in increased labour costs.

None of these additional burdens have been incorporated into the pricing for sustainable cocoa production. In light of the new cost structure, cocoa beans have been undervalued for decades. Farmers have become poorer and are exploring alternative sources of livelihood.

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2023/oct/analysis-cocoa-prices-are-surging-west-african-countries-should-negotiate-better-deal

Perhaps Rowlatt might reflect on that when he is munching his easter egg next week.