“fool's game”?

Cocoa: Chocolate manufacturers and supermarkets, the big winners far from Africa

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Cocoa War: Farmers vs multinationals

By Estelle Maussion

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Posted on January 12, 2023 08:32

Despite a standoff imposed by Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, chocolate manufacturers and distributors maintain a firm grip on the industry and the price paid to producers.

This is part 2 of a 5-part series

It’s like the battle of David vs. Goliath… which, for the time being, is being won by the giant. This tug-of-war pits, on one side, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana – the world’s first and second largest cocoa producers – and the ‘brown gold’ industry on the other, as the former seek better remuneration for their farmers. Although all the players agree on the need to pay farmers better, so far it has been impossible to agree on how to go about it.

As a result, the system that has been in place for decades perdures: a chocolate industry favouring the final links in the chain – chocolate makers and supermarkets – to the detriment of the first, the cocoa farmers.

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