Healthy bat and bird populations don’t only help to keep the endangered tropical dry forests of northern Peru in equilibrium. For the regions’ farmers of cacao—the main ingredient in chocolate— these predators are worth almost $1,000 per hectare of annual production.
In the tropical dry forests of northern Peru, farmers grow some of the most uniquely flavorful cacao in the world. This variety is calledBlanco de Piura, named for its unusual white beans and the region that overlays its biological range, which is very near the site of cacao’s ancient origins. Around the globe, chocolatiers admire thisfine flavor cacao, but the locals also sing its praises – including the birds, bats, ants, squirrels, and many other species who are frequent visitors of cacao agroforestry systems.
The conventional model of growing cacao in monocultures favors yield on the short-term, but it’s also fragile, wrought with ecological and economic risks for small farmers. One reason for this is that cacao is an understory plant, but in the conventional model, it’s grown without the shade it relies on in its early development. When cacao is the lone plant in this model, resources are limited for the bugs and other critters that otherwise would be supported and balanced by an entire forest ecosystem.
Cacao agroforestry, distinguished from the conventional methods by the presence of accompanying trees next to cacao, is part of CGIAR’sNature-Positive Solutions Initiative, or NATURE+. Practitioners of cacao agroforestry plant a variety of trees side by side—some for timber, some for fruit, and some that support wildlife. But the last of these isn’t merely a sacrifice for the sake of biodiversity; NATURE+ researchers at theAlliance of Bioversity International and CIAThave found thatfarmers actually benefit from working with other creaturesthat call the forest home.
In northern Peru, irrigated cacao agroforests are fruity oases in an otherwise arid environment. It’d be reasonable to assume that farmers have to compete with the animals and insects that surround them, but the truth is that’s not always the case. Over the past two years, Alliance scientist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Göttingen Carolina Ocampo-Ariza, documented with colleagues howbirds and bats in the region are some of the farmers’ greatest collaborators. The team’sfindingswere published inEcological Applicationsin May.
Ocampo-Ariza and her team discovered that birds pass their days and bats their nights consuming theaphids and mealybugsthat would otherwise harm the tiny white blossoms of cacao trees, as well as young fruits. Of course, fewer blossoms mean less fruit and less cacao to sell. In fact, when Ocampo-Ariza prevented birds and bats from accessing individual cacao trees, she found that those trees received the most damage from pests and had the smallest cacao yields. Cumulatively, Ocampo found thatthe presence of birds and bats accounted for 54% of the total productivity of cacao treesin her study. Ocampo explains that the birds and bats provide a “pest predation service” without any cost to the farmer or the environment. And the cacao yield that results from this protection? It’s worth approximately$959 per hectareper year for Peruvian cacao farmers in the study site.
