Two Crops, One Crisis: Climate Change Threatens Cocoa and Tea

Every sip of Kenyan tea and every square of Ghanaian chocolate carries a hidden weight: the increasing burden of a warming climate. Two powerful institutions - the Kenya Tea Development Agency (KTDA) and Ghana’s Cocoa Board (Cocobod) -  stand at a critical crossroads, navigating how to sustain smallholder livelihoods, protect ecosystems, and maintain export competitiveness in a rapidly changing world. As these institutions feel the pressure of climate change, they are making some effort to help farmers adapt, but uptake can be slow, and experts say we don’t have time to wait.

“Any plant you put in the ground now will be there 20 to 30 years from now,” said Christian Bunn, a climate researcher at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Colombia, who studies West Africa’s cocoa belt. “So independent of the early climate impacts that are increasingly becoming a reality,  there is also always the undeniable need to anticipate adaptations required in future.”

Between July 2022 and February 2024, global cocoa prices surged by 136% — a spike driven significantly by decreased yields from extreme weather in West Africa’s cocoa belt. Tea has faced a less dramatic price increase, but in the first seven months of 2025, Kenya’s tea production fell by 11.5%. A comprehensive review of global tea-yield studies showed that this was, at least in part, caused by rising temperatures, along with other climate pressures.

What are the Cocobod and the Tea Agency?

Commodity agencies such as Kenya’s KTDA and Ghana’s Cocoa Board — shortened to Coco Board and eventually stylized to Cocobod — are central intermediaries between millions of smallholder farmers and the global market, created to stabilize key cash-crop sectors that underpin national economies.

In the case of tea, more than 60 percent of global production comes from smallholders, securing the livelihoods of about 13 million people. Where cocoa is concerned, the dependence is even greater: about 90 percent of global cocoa is planted by smallholder farmers, frequently on just a few hectares. Around 50 million people are dependent on income along the cocoa value chain.

Ghana’s Cocobod, established in 1947, is a government institution. It sometimes provides seedlings, fertilizers, and tools to farmers, but its main benefit is that it stabilizes the price. Farmers receive a price for their cocoa at the beginning of each season based on projected international prices. This is meant to shield them from market swings. But in return, the Cocobod takes a 30% cut.

Ghana's economy is heavily dependent on cocoa, which makes up about 20 percent of the country's foreign exchange income. Prodcution being dependent on smallholders in combination with a global market dominated by a handfull of buyers and manufacturers of chocolate make Ghan's economy especially vulnerable to swings in international cocoa prices and climate shocks. Every disturbance - from an outbreak of disease to changed patterns of precipitation - can have effects on rural communities and the national economy and underlines its vulnerability.

Critics say that the system is too expensive and inefficient, running up the cost for farmers, according to a report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Many farmers have said the price they get at the beginning of the season is far too low, especially compared to their neighbors in the Ivory Coast, which have similar Cocoa yields, but no board controlling the price. Nowadays, a few licensed cocoa buying enterprises (LBCs) are allowed to purchase cocoa in Ghana. In the 2018-2019 season, about a dozen LBCs bought about 57 percent of total production. However, LBCs are subject to Cocobod control and have to hand over their beans for export. As a result, they work in cooperation with Cocobod rather than as competitors.

KTDA, founded in 1964, owns and manages 71 tea factories, which are co-owned by smallholder farmers. The farmers will bring fresh tea leaves to factories, where KTDA can help handle the fermenting, drying and packaging, among other processing steps. It then uses an auction-based system that leads to fluctuating prices based on the global demand.

KTDA has faced criticism for its lack of transparency, with farmers often complaining that they don’t understand how the auction prices translate into payments. While it is technically farmer-owned, critics argue that it’s centrally run with limited farmer input and high administrative costs. Last month, the Kenyan government ordered an audit to figure out how the funds are being utilized.

Although tea makes up a smaller portion of GDP in Kenya compared to cocoa in Ghana, it is the most important export product of the country. In addition, is is of particular economic importance in certain regions: Districts such as Embu, Kericho and Nandi are dependent on tea as far as employment, income and communal services are concerned. This local dependence means that climate shocks, pest outbreaks or price fluctuations have direct effetcs on the livelihoods and social stability of the most important tea planting regions.

Confronting a warming world

Climate pressures are forcing Ghana’s cocoa sector and Kenya’s tea industry to confront risks and find ways to remain relevant and useful to their farmers. The two institutions are responding with notably different systems.

In Ghana’s cocoa belt, farmers are already seeing “a shift in the timing of rains, with more frequent dry spells and more extremes overall,” said Bunn. “The suitability is declining already." He points to the fact that cocoa is extremely sensitive to the weather and struggles to survive massive swings between drought and rainfall. This leads to uncertainty around long-term productivity.

Cocoa trees live for many years, producing cocoa pods year after year, which means farmers are forced to make long term decisions when planting a tree. This, Bunn says, makes adaptation especially difficult. “Cocoa is a perennial crop, so farmers make decisions now that bind them for 20 or 30 years,” Bunn said. With rainfall patterns shifting and disease pressures rising, many farmers are hesitant to adopt more labor-intensive resilience practices. These include planting trees for shading, diversifying crops, installing irrigation systems, more frequent pruning and mulching as well as controlling pests and diseases by implementing techniques of agroforestry. “They don’t want to invest more in a system that is already risky,” he adds, with many choosing to “keep cocoa low-input rather than manage it more intensively.”

Kenya’s tea industry is facing similar climate disruptions, according to Sudi Biko Matara, general manager and executive trustee of the KTDA Foundation, an independent, but KTDA-funded institution. The foundation concentrates on education, health care, the promotion of women, youth programmes, water and sanitary structures as well as supporting the livelihoods of people in the tea planting reagions. He says farmers are dealing with “unpredictable rains, longer dry spells, and extreme temperature fluctuations,” all of which directly affect yields and leaf quality. Frost and hail — events once considered rare — now “wipe out entire sections of bushes,” he says.

Matara notes that land fragmentation has also become a major constraint, with many farmers operating plots too small to absorb climate losses or invest in new practices. Unlike cocoa, tea does not require decades-long planning for new bushes, but the crop reacts immediately to moisture and temperature stress, driving sharp year-to-year variability.

Two paths to greater climate resilience

With similar climatic stresses, systems for managing plants are crucial factors in dealing with the effects of climate change. In Kenya, the challenge lies in mobilising and leveraging the potential of private investors, while Ghana is confronted with limited financial resources being available for adaptation measures. Many smallholders in Ghana are not holders of formal land rights so that their ability to invest in long-term resilience is dependent on public assistance. As a result, adaptation is a challenge for the public sector and dependent on state subsidies, technical assistance and regulatory support.

In contrast, the privatised structure of the tea sector in Kenya means that a substantial part of production is based on small farmers collectively represented by the KTDA, as well as a few large plantations run by multinational or private companies. Therefore, a large part of the responsibility and the opportunities of climate adaptation in Kenya are borne by private enterprises, who can use capital, resources and incentives to invest in instruments such as irrigation and trees for shade.

A new phase for cocoa and tea

In both countries, the sectors are intrducing measure for adaptation in the face of changes. In Ghana, researchers and institutions are pushing for improved planting materials, climate-smart options such as shade integration, drought-tolerant varieties, and soil management techniques. Cocobod has been trying to scale up climate-smart cocoa practices, largely through its technical wing, the Cocoa Health and Extension Division, or CHED. CHED oversees on-farm training, distributes improved seedlings, and promotes practices such as pruning, shade-tree planting and better pest control.

Cocobod has also introduced a national Climate-Smart Cocoa standard which lists guidelines and criteria of proven measures for cocoa farmers. It promotes activities such as agroforestry, soil and water conservation, as well as pest resistant cultivation methods with the goal of making cocoa cultivation more climate resistant. Cocobod is also partnering with major funders — including the World Bank and the Global Center on Adaptation through the Ghana Tree Crop Diversification Project — to expand access to these techniques. Finance is mainly provided by the state, complemented by private funds from major chocolate producers such as Mars, Nestlé and Ferrero. International development agencies are also contributing.

But despite these efforts, adoption on the ground is uneven. While some farmers have embraced the full package of climate-smart practices, many others lack the labor, seedlings, or inputs needed to put the guidance into action, said Bunn. Large areas of diseased or aging cocoa farms have yet to be rehabilitated, in part due to inconsistent access to extension officers as a major constraint. Rising costs and debt have made it harder for the agency to maintain steady input subsidies and outreach programs. As a result, even as the technical framework and partnerships exist, the rollout of climate-smart cocoa production is still limited - leaving many farmers exposed to climate-driven declines in productivity.

In Kenya, KTDA is expanding its agronomic training programs and sending out field officers to help tea farmers manage “unpredictable rains, longer dry spells, and extreme temperature fluctuations,” said Matara. The agency is also investing in small hydropower plants to stabilize energy supplies to factories and cut fuel costs — moves aimed at buffering the sector from both climate and market volatility. But the yield is declining.

Internal assessments, Matara says, indicate that “some zones may not sustain tea as we know it if these patterns continue.” The message KTDA is delivering to farmers is increasingly blunt: adaptation is “not optional but essential for survival.”

The Foundation side of the institution has also been rolling out climate-smart farming and diversification programmes aimed at strengthening resilience among smallholders. In 2025 alone, more than 2,900 tea farmers in Embu County completed a six-month training programme on climate-adaptive agriculture and crop diversification.

Overall, these institutions in both Kenya and Ghana are entering a new phase — one with far more urgency, necessity, and real world consequences. “The conversation is shifting from when we started 10 years ago,” said Bunn. “Then, it was about future climate change.” At the time, he added, companies were focused on building a brand that had something to do with sustainability. “Now, it’s something that's affecting the core business. It's about securing the future of the country.”

Jesse Chase-Lubitz is a journalist and contributor to the information platform DEVEX.