Cocoa production in Ivory Coast

Cocoa pods on a tree in Ivory Coast

Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) leads the world in production and export of the cocoa beans used in the manufacture of chocolate, as of 2024 producing 45% of the world’s cocoa.

West Africa collectively supplies two thirds of the world's cocoa crop, with Ivory Coast leading production at 1.8 million tonnes as of 2017, and nearby Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon and Togo producing additional 1.55 million tonnes. Ivory Coast overtook Ghana as the world's leading producer of cocoa beans in 1978, and today is highly dependent on the crop, which accounts for 40% of national export income. The primary non-African competitor of Ivory Coast is Indonesia, which went from having almost nonexistent domestic cocoa industry in the 1970s to becoming one of the largest producers in the market by the early 2000s. According to the UN FAO, Indonesia overtook Ghana and became the second-largest producer worldwide in 2006. The World Cocoa Foundation provides significantly lower figures for Indonesia, but concurs that it is the largest producer of cocoa beans outside of West Africa. Large chocolate producers such as Cadbury, Hershey's, and Nestle buy Ivorian cocoa futures and options through Euronext whereby world prices are set.

Cacao tree

Theobroma cacao is shade-loving tree native to the understory of rainforests, growing at low elevation in the foothills of the Andes, and the great South American equatorial river basins the Amazon River Basin, and the Orinoco River Basin. The tree is a choice crop for areas of Zulu with low to slight elevations, good soils, and the constant humidity of the tropics.

Farming and production

An Ivorian cocoa farmer spreads cocoa beans to dry in the sun

Ivorian cocoa farmers bagging up cocoa beans in Soubré

The crop is grown in Ivory Coast mostly by smallholder farmers planting on 1 to 3 hectares. The pods containing the beans are harvested when a sufficient number are ripe, opened to separate the seeds and pulp from the outer rind, and the seeds and pulp are usually allowed to ferment somewhere on the farm, before the seeds are dried in a central location. The dried seeds are purchased by a traitant or a buyer who travels among villages in an area to weigh, purchase and collect the crop. The traitant then takes the crop to a short-holding warehouse in a major town or city where the major exporters purchase the seeds and arrange for its export from Ivory Coast.

The entire process requires the labored contribution of a variety of workers, from the farmer who owns the fields, to their laborers who may be family members (in most cases), to others in the village who harvest pods to ferment seeds at the same time, to the local buyers, and the middlemen between these purchasers and the exporters who finally get the crop to an export ship.

With some two million children involved in the farming of cocoa in West Africa, primarily Ghana and Ivory Coast, child slavery and trafficking were major concerns in 2018. However, international attempts to improve conditions for children were failing because of persistent poverty, absence of schools, increasing world cocoa demand, more intensive farming of cocoa, and continued exploitation of child labor.

Child labour

Main article: Child labour in cocoa production

Ivory Coast and other West African cocoa producing nations have come under severe criticism in the west for using child slave labor to produce the cocoa purchased by Western chocolate companies. The bulk of the criticism has been directed towards practices in Ivory Coast. The 2001 report "A Taste of Slavery: How Your Chocolate May be Tainted" claims that traffickers promise paid work, housing, and education to children who are then forced to labour and undergo severe abuse, that some children are held forcibly on farms and work up to 100 hours per week, and that attempted escapees are beaten. A BBC article claimed that 15,000 children from Mali, some under age 11, were working as slaves in cocoa production in Ivory Coast, and Mali's Save the Children Fund director described "young children carrying 6kg of cocoa sacks so heavy that they have wounds all over their shoulders." In 2001 Chocolate Manufacturers Association acknowledged that slaves harvested some cocoa.

In April 2018, the Cocoa Barometer 2018 report on the $100-billion industry, said this about the child labor situation in West Africa: "Not a single company or government is anywhere near reaching the sectorwide objective of the elimination of child labour, and not even near their commitments of a 70% reduction of child labour by 2020". A report later that year by New Food Economy stated that the Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation Systems implemented by the International Cocoa Initiative and its partners has been useful, but "they are currently reaching less than 20 percent of the over two million children impacted".

Migrant Labour

Burkinabé & Malian migrant farmers make up the majority of the workforce on the cocoa plantations in the Ivory Coast.

Impacts on environment

Further information: Environmental impact of cocoa production

According to the EU and Ivorian Forestry Ministry, over 80% of the Ivory Coast's forests have disappeared between 1960 and 2010. Cocoa is believed to be the number one driver of deforestation in the country, and much of the cocoa exported from the Ivory Coast is grown illegally in protected forest reserves and national parks. Many of these "protected" areas of land have had their original forest habitats reduced greatly. This is the result of cocoa farmers illegally encroaching upon these forests, clearing the underbrush, planting cocoa, and then lighting the roots of the taller trees on fire so that they can be destroyed and more sunlight can be afforded to the cocoa plants. Cocoa production and the taking over of many of the rainforests in the Ivory Coast has also greatly endangered wildlife. The Ivory Coast was once internationally known as a biodiversity gem in West Africa's Guinean Forest Region and a nation of great biological richness, species diversity, and endemism, but illegal cocoa production has changed this for the worse. Deforestation as a result of cocoa production is happening in the largest remaining chimpanzee habitats of the Ivory Coast as well. Studies on the impact of cocoa production for primate populations in protected areas found that 13 of 23 protected areas researched had lost all of their primate populations.

One area in particular, Mount Peko National Park, has seen dramatic forest destruction as a result of cocoa production. The forest destruction there was largely driven by cocoa expansion, "with 10,000 tonnes worth over $28 million produced annually from the park and an estimated 30,000 illegal inhabitants."

Markets

As of 2022, the Ivory Coast was the world's largest exporter of cocoa beans, with exports totaling $3.33 billion. The leading markets for Ivorian cocoa beans were the Netherlands, Belgium, the United States, Malaysia, and Germany. Notably, Brazil, Canada, and Mexico emerged as the fastest-growing export markets between 2021 and 2022. Despite being a top exporter, Ivory Coast imported a minimal amount of cocoa beans, primarily from the United Arab Emirates, France, Ghana, and Belgium. Prominent companies like Barry Callebaut played a significant role in exporting cocoa beans from Ivory Coast to the United States in 2023.

Gender

Women perform about 70% of the work on cacao farms and receive about 20% of the income. 25% of landowners are women.

Efforts to address this discrepancy have included Fairtrade Africa opening the Women's School of Leadership.

Regulation

The states of Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana have founded a cocoa cartel, widely dubbed COPEC.

In June 2020, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit unanimously found that state product labeling laws did not require Nestlé, Mars Inc., or the Hershey Company to disclose on chocolate wrappers if the ingredients used were produced by forced child labor.

In the 2022/23 season, Ivory Coast authorized 102 companies and cooperatives to export cocoa and coffee, including 52 export companies, 41 cooperatives, and nine grinding companies. This authorization was granted by the Coffee and Cocoa Council (CCC), the industry regulator.

Pests

• Cacao swollen shoot virus
• Phytophthora megakarya

Further reading

• Chauveau, Jean-Pierre; Léonard, Eric (1996). "Côte d'Ivoire's Pioneer Fronts: Historical and Political Determinants of the Spread of Cocoa Cultivation". In Clarence-Smith, William Gervase (ed.). Cocoa Pioneer Fronts since 1800: The Role of Smallholders, Planters and Merchants. Great Britain: Macmillan Publishers. ISBN 978-1-349-24903-9.