Expanding the frontiers of global crop production using climate-smart agronomy: a detour from the century-old paradigm limiting expansion in cocoa farming beyond 20°N and 20°S of the equator
Abstract
For over a century, cocoa production was widely believed to be restricted to latitude 20°N-20°S of the equator. This long-standing assumption dictated global cocoa production status, investments, researches, pests and disease control; and inadvertently tilted demand-supply curve, creating a regionalized marketing system with monopolized market policies. However, emerging empirical evidences probed the universality of this constraint. Base on the proof provided by Peter Mudiaga Etaware (in his previous research), the current study was designed to systematically investigate the ecological validity of the cocoa belt concept by the use of classical agro-ecological analysis to identify favorable production regions (FPR), climate appraisal to determine climate fitness (CF)/cocoa survival odds (CSO), and climate-smart disease forecasting to evaluate host-pathogen affinity i.e., black pod disease (BPD) outbreak. The findings from this study showed that cocoa can actually thrive outside the predefined latitudinal boundaries for cocoa farming in some identified geographical regions within countries like Bahamas (Lat. = 25.03°N, FPR=North/South, CF/CSO ≤ 100%, 9.2≤BPD%≤16.6), Bangladesh (Lat. = 23.81°N, FPR=North/South, CF/CSO ≤ 100%, 3.3≤BPD ≤ 13.5), Bhutan (Lat. = 27.47°N, FPR=South, CF/CSO=0-75%, 0.0≤BPD%≤7.9), China (Lat. = 39.90°N, FPR=South, CF/CSO=0-75%, 0.0≤BPD%≤10.6), Cuba (Lat. = 21.52°N, FPR=North/South, CF/CSO ≤ 100%, 10.0≤BPD%≤17.7), India (Lat. = 28.61°N, FPR=South, CF/CSO ≤ 100%, 0.0≤BPD%≤17.0), Mexico (Lat. = 23.63°N, FPR=South, CF/CSO ≤ 100%, 0.0≤BPD%≤14.0), Nepal (Lat. = 27.71°N, FPR=South, CF/CSO ≤ 100%, 0.0≤BPD%≤12.1), Paraguay (Lat. = 25.26°S, FPR=North/South, CF/CSO ≤ 100%, 4.8≤BPD%≤17.5), Taiwan (Lat. = 23.70°N, FPR=North/South, CF/CSO ≤ 100%, 1.9≤BPD%≤13.1), and Vietnam (Lat. = 21.03°N, FPR=North/South, CF/CSO ≤ 100%, 7.3≤BPD%≤17.0). Therefore, the current research was able to identify new geographical regions for cocoa cultivation worldwide. However, consistency and improvement in cocoa production within these countries depend on the adoption of highly specialized techniques like the use of climate-smart agroforestry, and good cultural and agricultural practices. Finally, the outcome of this research is a pathfinder to a limitless channel of positive possibilities.