Now that the civil crisis is over and the shooting has stopped, allowing some form of normality to return, it was possible to travel in the bush and support as many of our people as possible.
It appears that there are still 400,000 souls who are still to return to the Ivory Coast having fled the country when the violence started, and this is very apparent in the capital city of Abidjan, where it’s deserted at night.
As I pass through the plantations, the harsh reality of cocoa growing came back to me, and I thought it would be a good notion to highlight the numbers involved.
Cocoa faces a significant sustainably challenge in the future if we cannot make a quantum leap with the above results in the next 5-10 years.
This is something to think about when you next buy your favourite chocolate bar.
Marc Donaldson is a partner at On The Ball Consulting. He’s the former president of Delfi Cocoa and the former CEO of Heritage Fine Chocolates. He was also managing director Asia Pacific for Barry Callebaut.
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