Is Water Use in the Chocolate Industry Excessive?
Cocoa beans in a cacao pod. Source: Wikipedia
Of the all the foods you consumed today, which do you think had the highest water use?
Takeaway coffee has been highlighted as a major consumer of water, from the resources needed to grow the coffee bean and produce the milk to the paper cup and even the plastic lid. However, one crop that has an even larger water footprint is the cocoa bean. Whilst coffee requires roughly 21,000 litres to grow and process one kilogram, that bar of chocolate needs a staggering 27,000 litres of water per kilo. Tomatoes, often associated with highly irrigated farming methods, require just 180 litres per kilo.
Does that mean that we need to limit our chocolate consumption? In the future will we have to face the sad prospect of giving up our Christmas selection box or our Valentine’s Day chocolates? According to the United Nations 27,000 litres is enough water to sustain 1350 people at the minimum level for healthy living.
It seems a vast amount of water but there is a simple reason behind the large water footprint. The natural habitat of the cocoa bean is the lower storey of the evergreen rainforest and the plant requires vast amounts of water to thrive. It needs rainfall of between 1,500mm and 2,000mm per year with consistent levels throughout the year. Compare this to the 650mm per year as an average in London or 860mm per year in the reputedly wet city of Manchester. The real issue isn’t the volume of water needed. Instead we need to look at whether the water needed to grow and process chocolate has an adverse impact on the countries where it is grown.
One of the ways to judge if a region is struggling to cope with the water demands placed on it by agriculture is by measuring water stress. This is defined as “the percentage of a country’s territory affected by over subscription of water resources.” It is hard to get data for specific regions but according to Yale University’s 2010 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) the country of Ghana, one of the main cocoa growing countries, has 0% water stress despite using 10% of their water resources for agriculture. The country also has an impressive 100% of critical habitats protected. By comparison the main chocolate processing country, the USA, has a water stress index of 21% and just 57% of critical habitats protected.
Global Cocoa Bean output in 2005. Wikipedia
Along with water stress another issue to look at is overall water demand for the crop. Those of you with a keen eye will have noticed that the statistics are for one kilo of chocolate, rather than per bar, and even the chocolate loving Brits only eat 10 kilos per year on average. Three million tonnes of cocoa beans are produced globally per year, a tiny fraction of the quantities of sugar cane or wheat.
So the headline water footprint of 27,000 litres per kilo is less of a concern when considered in context. Admittedly the data is based on averages, and there may be regions where cocoa beans are growing at the edges of their climatic range and need irrigation. The industry is not without wider criticisms, such as claims of child labour and unfair pricing that impacts on small producers. Highlighting water usage is a great way to encourage people to begin to think about the embedded water in the products we use everyday. However, with chocolate the data behind the eye catching headline figures is less dramatic. And reassuring for environmentally aware chocoholics.
For now, environmentally aware chocaholics can continue to enjoy chocolate!. Image source: Wikipedia.
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