What Does a Day's Work Consist of on a Cocoa Farm?
Cocoa trees are native to tropical forests of central and South America, but are cultivated in Asia and Africa as well. Cocoa is a cash crop that is in constant demand and 75 percent of the world's cocoa is grown in West Africa. Child labor plays a role in cocoa production with reports in Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire of children being injured while performing unsafe tasks in cocoa farming. Does this Spark an idea?
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Harvesting
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On small, family owned farms in Ghana, Nigeria and Cote d'Ivoire, the whole family will help out as well as neighbors and friends. The ripe pods are collected from the trees with the aid of knives that are attached to long poles. Workers must be careful not to destroy the flowers that will form new pods.
Splitting
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Workers collect cocoa pods in baskets which they balance on top of their heads. The pods are then opened individually by hand and the beans are taken out. There are about 30 beans in a cocoa pod and each bean is slightly less than an inch in length.
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Fermentation and Drying
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There are different methods for fermentation. Workers on farms in Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana use the heap method, in which piles of wet cocoa beans are placed on leaves and then covered with more leaves. Workers have to turn the beans regularly to make sure that the fermentation process is taking place evenly. In Malaysia and the West Indies, wooden boxes are used with holes at the bottom allow for drainage, while in Nigeria fermentation takes place in leaf-lined baskets that are also covered with leaves. Once the beans are fermented, workers need to dry the beans by spreading them out on mats in the sun. After drying is completed the beans are placed into bags and sold on to manufacturers who process the beans into chocolate.
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References
- Photo Credit Chocolate image by Sergey Yakovenko from Fotolia.com
