Ivorian cocoa farmers ‘barely survive’ while chocolate company profits soar

Farmers in Ivory Coast, the source of 45% of the world’s cocoa beans, battle climate change and market inequality.

Aboude, Ivory Coast – It’s 11am in Aboude, a village in southern Ivory Coast, and Magne Akoua has already been working on his cacao farm for several hours. The 65-year-old moves slowly and methodically from one tree to the next, scrupulously shunning the scorching sun.

“We have to check on our fruit daily. Every three months, it becomes ripe and we can harvest it. But harvest hasn’t been good at all lately,” he says.

Akoua has been a farmer for more than 40 years since he decided to leave a low-level administrative job in Abidjan, the country’s economic capital, to run a small piece of family land on the outskirts of his native Aboude.

Cacao – the plant whose pods are harvested into cocoa, eventually becoming chocolate – is an intricate agricultural product that is particularly vulnerable to its natural environment.

“I love cacao. It’s what I know best. But it’s very difficult to work with,” Akoua explains. “It gets contaminated by pests. It needs a perfect balance between rainfall and heat to thrive, otherwise, its roots get flooded and rot or they simply dry up. This means that we get fewer pods and fewer pods means fewer cacao beans.”