Cocoa farmers in west africa and the chocolate we eat

Cocoa is not only the pride of Ghana but it's a very important crop throughout the world. But of course not just in Ghana, even in a country like Ivory Coast. Although I've never been there before, looking at their production, there is a substantial amount of income created by cocoa produced in the Ivory Coast where it is about forty percent of the income for all crops produced in that country. It's fifteen percent in my country.

These figures can tell you that a bad harvest can cause a political crisis or that a policy change in a place like London can cause the people living in other regions to suffer tremendously and they won't know until long after the problem started.

I bought a bar of dark chocolate at a really expensive petrol station at spintex, Accra. The bar had a brown paper wrapper with all the essential packaging except for the source of the chocolate, which read "West Africa". I feel like the importance of the chocolate source is lost on many people here.

When you look at the thousands of small farmers in Africa that are really the ones producing the cocoa, the number of things that each farmer can buy and pay with his or her income from the crop is not enough , but if course there are some that have succeeded in the business.

The point I'm trying to make is that although the farmer did not create the chocolate bar, it's obvious that without the farmer's work to produce the cocoa from his or her farm the chocolate bar we enjoy would not exist.