12.04.2024
Chocolate Prices To Keep Rising As West Africa’s Cocoa Crisis Deepens
In its most sobering assessment to date, according to data compiled since 2022 and obtained by Reuters, Ghana’s cocoa marketing board Cocobod estimates that 590,000 hectares (1.45 million acres) of plantations have been infected with swollen shoot, a virus that will ultimately kill them. The virus first reduces yields before finally killing the trees. Once infected with swollen shoots, plantations must be uprooted and the soil treated before the cocoa can be replanted. Even after rehabilitation, replanted trees take two to four years to mature and produce beans. And a significant rebound in cocoa production in the two nations faces other major obstacles. Just three years ago, Samreboi had approximately 38,000 hectares of cocoa planted, according to the local Cocobod office there. Today, it has fallen to just 15,400. Across Ghana, cocoa plantations are giving way to gold miners, known locally as galamsey. And a study four years ago found that 20,000 hectares of cocoa had been lost to galamsey, experts said illegal mining has expanded rapidly in the intervening years. Credit: DW
Poverty deprives people of adequate education, health care and of life's most basic necessities- safe living conditions (including clean air and clean drinking water) and an adequate food supply. The developed (industrialized) countries today account for roughly 20 percent of the world's population but control about 80 percent of the world's wealth.
Poverty and pollution seem to operate in a vicious cycle that, so far, has been hard to break. Even in the developed nations, the gap between the rich and the poor is evident in their respective social and environmental conditions.
Poverty and pollution seem to operate in a vicious cycle that, so far, has been hard to break. Even in the developed nations, the gap between the rich and the poor is evident in their respective social and environmental conditions.
