Accounting for land use changes beyond the farm-level in sustainability assessments: The impact of cocoa production

Landscape-Scale Biodiversity Impacts Analysis of Côte d'Ivoire's Cocoa Cultivation along Export Supply Chains

Agricultural land use for export commodities leads to significant biodiversity impacts. A spatially detailed assessment of these impacts is crucial for implementing effective mitigation policies. Using cocoa cultivation and exports in Côte d'Ivoire as an example, we present a novel framework that combines earth observations, enhanced landscape-scale biodiversity models, and subnational export supply chain data sets to track the tele-connected potential biodiversity impacts of export groups and importing countries. We found that cocoa cultivation accounts for ∼44% of the biodiversity impacts in Côte d'Ivoire's cocoa cultivation areas, with >90% attributable to cocoa exports. The top 10 importing countries account for ∼84% of these impacts. Our method offers improved spatial detail compared to the existing approaches, facilitating the identification of biodiversity impact hotspots. Additionally, the biodiversity impacts of agroforestry cocoa are not always lower compared to full-sun cocoa, especially when agroforestry systems are established in regions of high biodiversity importance. Our transferable framework provides a comprehensive understanding of biodiversity footprint and promotes informed decision-making for sustainable agricultural production, processing, and trade. Our framework's application is currently constrained by the scarcity of detailed supply chain data sets; we underscore the urgent need for improved supply chain transparency to fully unlock the framework's potential.

Assessment of the environmental impact and economic performance of cacao agroforestry systems in the Ecuadorian Amazon region: An LCA approach

Ecuador is the third largest cacao exporter in the world. Up to 10 % of Ecuador's cacao production is grown in the Amazon region, mostly under conventional (CA) and organic (OA) agroforestry systems. Despite the importance of cacao in this area, no previous studies on its environmental impact and economic viability have yet been carried out. The main objective of this research is to fill this gap and, more specifically, perform a comparative analysis between CA and OA systems. For this purpose, primary information was gathered from 90 farms (44 conventional and 46 organic ones) that implement land management practices. The environmental performance of cacao production was assessed using a life cycle analysis methodology, with a cradle-to-farm gate approach. Up to twelve impact categories and five environmental and monetary efficiency indicators were estimated based on three functional units (1 kg of cacao, 1 kg of output sold, and 1 ha). Additionally, an economic viability analysis was performed, focused on profitability. The results show that organic management allows to reduce the environmental impact in all the analyzed categories, except for the land footprint, and improved the environmental and economic efficiency of agroforestry systems. The economic analysis shows no statistically significant differences between CA and OA profitability (net margin), which can be improved by selling co-products. Despite the low environmental impact of both types of system, economic profitability is certainly one of the weaknesses of cacao production in the Ecuadorian Amazon region. This study contributes to develop technical, production-related and political actions that could improve the economic cacao production situation without jeopardizing the environmental benefit obtained by these systems.

Effects of Monocropping on Land Cover Transitions in the Wet Evergreen Agro-Ecological Zone of Ghana

The wet evergreen forest ecological zone of Ghana is undergoing notable structural changes, although most maps erroneously depict the area to be an intact forest. Several hectares of plantation agriculture such as rubber, oil palm, and cocoa are replacing the natural vegetation and habitats, thereby threatening indigenous biodiversity. This study aimed to assess the effects of tree monocrop proliferation on landscape transitions between 1986 and 2020 in the Wassa East District of Ghana. The ISODATA clustering technique was used to produce land cover category maps from Landsat images of 1986, 2002, and 2020. A post-classification change detection technique resulted in transition matrices which were used for the computation of land cover transition intensities over 34 years. The results showed that the landscape was dominated by forests in 1986. Still, the forest continuously declined by 34% (1% annually) in 2020 while all other land cover types increased in both periods with cocoa covering 23% oil palm covering 14%, and rubber covering 2% of the land area. These conversions in the land area are important, especially since the closed forests usually transition to monocrops through the intermediate process: food crop farming. This information is essential for decision making on land development and biodiversity conservation.