
When people talk about the role of food production in the climate crisis, they will often name beef as one of the worst offenders, and for good reason. Beef has by far the highest carbon footprint of all the foodstuffs, as cows naturally produce high quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas that traps 28 time more heat than carbon dioxide. In Brazil, vast areas of the Amazon rainforest have been destroyed for cattle pasture and soy plantations to feed cattle in other countries, threatening to permanently destabilise one of the planet’s biggest absorbers of carbon.
However, less commonly discussed is the carbon footprint of mainstream chocolate, which is actually higher than some forms of beef farming and largely for the same reason: deforestation.
Much of the cocoa used in the mainstream chocolate industry is grown in Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana in West Africa. In the 1950s and 60s, Cote d’Ivoire alone had between 9-12 million hectares of rainforest. Today however, 90% of this has been cleared for open-sun cocoa plantations.

The loss of forests not only destroys a valuable carbon absorber, but it also increases carbon emissions by releasing a portion of the carbon stored in trees back into the atmosphere. Globally, deforestation contributes to 12-20% of all greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, current mainstream cocoa production both makes the climate crisis worse and degrades one of our best natural solutions for it.
Much of this stems from the desperate poverty of cocoa farmers in these countries, who receive only a measly 6% of the profits of the average cocoa bar. As a result, many are driven to illegally fell forests to grow as much cocoa as they can. Unfortunately, the soil quickly becomes exhausted after 5-10 years, leading the farmers to move on and fell even more forest to keep up with a growing global chocolate demand.
The good news is that it is possible to grow cocoa without destroying rainforests. Ironically, cocoa is naturally a shade-loving plant, meaning it grows best under the shade of trees (i.e. in a rainforest). However, agroforestry plots take longer to establish and require careful management, leading most farmers to opt for open-sun cocoa instead for faster profits.
At Cacao, we do not source our cocoa from West Africa, instead sourcing it from the Philippines, specifically from Auro, a company that similarly prioritises ethicality and environmentalism. Moreover, according to the Filippino Forestry Commission, the region of the Philippines where Auro sources its cocoa from has a low deforestation rate.
Ending deforestation in the chocolate industry is also something that consumers like you can take part in. As a general rule of thumb, if a chocolate product doesn’t list the origin of its cocoa on the packaging, it likely was grown in West Africa and thus should be avoided. Additionally, the environmental NGO, Mighty Earth, prepared a helpful scorecard ranking various chocolate brands on their environmental impact, which you can use to determine which ones to buy from and which to avoid.