Browsing: Cocoa farming

The bitter pill of cocoa’s value chain in Ghana and Ivory Coast

Industry and Trade September 24, 2024

Chocolate companies are avoiding paying minimum prices to cocoa farmers.
In Ghana and Ivory Coast, farmers are forced to engage in child labour to maintain optimum cocoa production amid meagre returns.
Cocoa prices peaked at $12,072 per tonne in February 2024.

Cocoa prices peaked at $12,072 per tonne in February of this year, only to drop to $7,960 per tonne this September, leaving farmers seeking solutions on how to cushion against such adverse price swings.

“Market reports say the world market price of cocoa has witnessed the highest levels of volatility over the past 12 months,” reported the Ghana Food and Agriculture Minister, Dr. Bryan Acheampong.

Ghana is one of the world’s largest producers and exporters of cocoa, one of the highest-priced agricultural food products in the world. To protect her farmers, Ghana has increased the producer price of cocoa by over 129 per cent, the minister announced.

“The cocoa …

From cocoa bean to desert wasteland: The environmental toll of chocolate production in Africa

Industry and Trade May 17, 2023

Bittersweet consequences. Global chocolate value chains are fueling desertification across West Africa, a new report says.
As chocolate demand soars, Côte d'Ivoire, the world’s largest producer of cocoa beans is paying a huge price with 80 percent of its forest cover lost.
Corruption fueling illegal logging and deforestation of rainforests for cocoa farms

The raw material needed to make chocolate is cocoa beans, but West Africa, which produces 40 percent of the world's produce, is destroying its rainforests at an unprecedented pace to feed global demand.

Already, Côte d'Ivoire, the world’s largest producer of cocoa beans has lost 80 percent of its forest cover over in just sic decades, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reports.

FAO's Transparency, Traceability and Deforestation survey in the Ivorian cocoa supply belt shows that the unmonitored value chain of chocolate is leaving populations vulnerable to adverse effects of climate change.