Chocolate is actually made from a fruit – the cocoa bean.  About 40 cocoa beans are contained within a cocoa pod. 

In Ghana cocoa trees are cultivated on small farms in amongst other rainforest trees such as maize and bananas.  These other plants protect the cocoa tree, providing shade from the intense Ghanaian sun.

A cocoa tree will produce two harvests per year of about 50 pods.  When a cocoa pod is ripe it will turn red, yellow or orange.  Each pod contains about 40 almond-sized seeds – enough to make eight bars of milk chocolate or 4 bars of dark chocolate.  (Source: The BitterSweet World of Chocolate)

The Latin name for the cocoa tree is Theobroma Cacao which means ‘Food of the Gods’.  The Swedish botanist Linnaeus gave the cocoa tree this name in the eighteenth century and it demonstrates how revered the tree has always been.

West Africa has been the centre of world cocoa cultivation for the last 60 years and today produces 67% of the world’s cocoa.  (Source: Developments magazine, published by DFID)  The four major cocoa produces in West Africa are the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon.  Ghana produces 14% of the world’s cocoa.

Ghana is the world’s second biggest cocoa producing country.  The Ivory Coast is the world’s largest producer.

90% of the world’s cocoa is grown on small family farms of 12 acres or less (Source: Developments magazine, published by DFID).

Cocoa is very prone to diseases like Black Pod and Mirid

Did you know that playing music attracts snakes.  So farmers cant take a portable radio player with them whilst harvesting their crop of cocoa!