Top seven cocoa producing countries

ICCO forecasts of production of cocoa beans for the 1997/98 cocoa year

Production forecast for 1997/98:

Country
(in thousand tonnes)
Côte d'Ivoire 1150.0
Ghana
370.0
Indonesia
310.0
Brazil
160.0
Nigeria
155.0
Cameroon
125.0
Malaysia
100.0

Reference:
Quarterly Bulletin of Cocoa Statistics, 24 (1), 1997/98
Source: International Cocoa organization, April 1998

Harvesting Cocoa & Cocoa processing

Chocolate production starts with harvesting coca in a forest. Cocoa comes from tropical
evergreen Cocoa trees, such as Theobroma Cocoa, which grow in the wet lowland tropics
of Central and South America, West Africa and Southeast Asia (within 20 C of the
equator) (Walter,1981) . Cocoa needs to be harvested manually in the forest. The seed
pods of coca will first be collected; the beans will be selected and placed in piles. These
cocoa beans will then be ready to be shipped to the manufacturer for mass production.

Step #1: Plucking and opening the Pods

Cocoa beans grow in pods that sprout off of the trunk and branches of cocoa trees. The
pods are about the size of a football. The pods start out green and turn orange when
they're ripe. When the pods are ripe, harvesters travel through the cocoa orchards with
machetes and hack the pods gently off of the trees.