Management practices can improve yields of carbon-rich cocoa agroforests in Brazil

Abstract

Solutions to enhance agricultural productivity, along with delivering social and environmental benefits, stand as major challenges in this century. Cocoa, the third most traded commodity worldwide, is primarily cultivated by small-holding producers in biodiversity-rich, conservation-priority tropical regions. This raises questions regarding optimal management practices that maximize agricultural yields, diversify producers' income, and ensure biodiversity maintenance and ecosystem services. We evaluate the main factors affecting cocoa productivity and carbon stock in cocoa agroforestry systems in southern Bahia, Brazil, aiming to identify win-win scenarios for both socioeconomic and environmental. We carefully selected and sampled 47 agroforest farms embedded within different landscape contexts, and evaluated the response of cocoa productivity to landscape forest cover, vegetation structure, shade level, carbon stock, and management practices, based on in-situ surveys and interviews. We also assessed the relationship between landscape forest cover, shade levels, and management practices to carbon stock. Our results indicate no significant relationship between productivity and local gradient shading, although the frequency of management practices positively affected cocoa yields. Conversely, shade trees played a key role in overall carbon storage (93% of the total amount), indicating a high potential for the carbon market in addition to safeguarding threatened species. Our study also shows that achieving sustainable intensification in cocoa production involves prioritizing management practices such as weed control, pruning cocoa trees, adjusting the total number of cocoa trees per hectare, and applying mineral or organic fertilizer. We therefore provide guidelines on how to effectively manage trade-offs between cocoa productivity, biodiversity conservation, and the delivery of key ecosystem services in tropical forest landscapes.