Ghana is the world’s second-largest cocoa producer, and that fact shapes everything from foreign exchange policy to the price of a chocolate bar in Berlin.
But on the farms themselves, the story is harder. Heat stress, irregular rainfall and aging trees are pushing yields down. Younger generations are leaving for the cities. The economics no longer add up the way they used to.
We travelled through the Western and Ashanti regions to meet the farmers, cooperatives and agronomists trying to build a more resilient future for a crop that built modern Ghana.