Ghana and Cocoa

Ghana was once the largest producer of cocoa in the entire world but due illegal smuggling of the cash crop to our neighbouring country Cote d’Ivoire, it wasn’t long before Cote d’Ivoire overtook Ghana in the production of cocoa. The story of how cocoa even came to Ghana is a story for another day. Cocoa is a cash commodity that contributes about 30% to Ghana’s export earnings, this means we earn a lot of money from the export of cocoa.

The cocoa produced is of high quality and highly nutritious. But there are some hindrances in the work of the farmers of the crop. Due to infection from diseases, sometimes some farmers are tempted to cut down their entire plantation and cultivate a different crop. A few years ago, some rubber producing companies tried to pounce on this occurrences. They proposed to the cocoa farmers to cut down their cocoa and replace them with gum producing plants. The gum is the main component for the production of rubber but activists and environmental enthusiasts like myself stood up against this move and that proposal had to be dropped immediately.

European Union (EU), has however threatened to stop importing cocoa from Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire due to high illegal mining activities that are affecting some parts of the cocoa plantations in both countries. This comes down to my consistent voicing out of the country’s inability to fight illegal mining. Illegal mining is destroying all of our natural resources; forest, land, waterbodies, and even the atmosphere. I think this threat from EU should be enforced. The country would definitely lose a lot of money but I think it would draw the attention of authorities to intense the fight against illegal mining. I will talk about the increase presence of China in Ghana and the effects we are gaining from it environmentally in my next report.

#StopIllegalMining

Green Cheers!