Chocolate under attack

By -
When I discovered that it was Chocolate Week (14 October - 20 October 2013), I thought this was the perfect excuse to gorge without guilt on my first love. I'm not fussy when it comes to the sweet stuff - I'll take it with biscuit, raisins, plain, dark and bitter (yum), hot and peppery, even with a pinch of salt. So you can imagine my shock, horror and despair to learn that cocoa production is on the decline.
image © from Permacultureghana

According to a study reported in oilprice.com, the warming of the planet will have direct impact on growing cocoa between 2030 and 2050. The cacao plant can only be grown in latitudes within 10 degrees of the equator, and in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire where around half of the world's cocoa is produced, temperatures are expected to rise by 2.3 degrees Celsius by the middle of the century. This is expected to be detrimental to breeding cocoa pods.

I also learnt from radio station LBC 97.3 that rubber is muscling in on cocoa's patch and farmers are clearing swathes of cocoa plantations to invest in the apparently more lucrative production of the stretchy stuff.

Other claims are that chocolate consumption is rising faster than cocoa production, which will make it more expensive, according to the Cocoa Research Association.

Cocoa production may be in a far away clime, but its effects are increasingly being seen here in the UK, especially since the humble chocolate is equitable to £1.

According to one expert on the LBC radio programme, manufacturers are trying to ensure the humble chocolate bar lives on and have introduced more nuts and fruit to the chocolate mix to make the little go a bit further......

By Kirsty Osei-Bempong

For more blogs on cocoa, check Britain's Cutty Sark: From Chinese tea to Ghanaian cocoa

All comments are welcome on this page. If you are having trouble posting on the Google+ page, please share your views via Facebook here. and Twitter here.

Please be aware that you may not reproduce, republish, modify or commercially exploit this content without our prior written consent.

Comments

  1. J16 October 2013 at 16:15

    Interesting. Will celebrate the week with a bar of Cadbury's whole nut (or two) rather than dairy milk!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Abena Sɛwaa19 January 2014 at 22:35

    thanks J ;)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ghanaian sitcom star leaves lasting legacy in Kwahu

By -
Image
The late Gyearbuor Asante, who famously played long-term mature student Matthew in hit British sitcom Desmond’s , was also a royal. Gyearbuor Asante: Image credit Carole Latimer He came from Tafo, Kwahu, in Ghana's Eastern Region but rather than follow tradition and become a chief, the young thespian got himself circumcised instead. The reason, according to details from charity the Friends of Tafo (Kwahu), was to rule himself out of enstoolment. He then left Ghana in the late 1960s to become an actor and the rest, as they say, is history. But life has a funny way of panning out and although Gyearbuor never became a chief, his close friend Humphrey Barclay, who incidentally was the executive producer of Desmond's , did!  "I met Gyearbuor (or Christopher as he was known in UK then) in 1972, when he was doing such shows as Crown Court and so on," he told MisBeee. "I visited Ghana many times as his guest and when he died in 2000 at the age of 58 o...
Read more

What's your favourite Adinkra symbol?

By -
Image
Screenshot of hand-painted Adinkra symbols from charity Mmofra_Ghana.  I put this question to MisBeee readers after blogging recently about the origins of Adinkra in the post: 'Adinkra - more than just a pretty face'. A dinkra is a series of ideographic symbols from Ghana and the Ivory Coast depicting age-old proverbs that incorporate aspects of Asante culture, flora and fauna. These symbols are strongly linked to religion, language, and geometry but in modern times are used widely in and outside Ghana for their aesthetic appeal. The list includes jewellery, pottery, clothing and architecture.  Below is a snapshot of some of the responses I received, feel free to add your own. All images below come from adinkra.org.  Kwame from Birmingham My favourite symbol is Gye Nyame because everything starts with God, and ends with God. God creates, sustains and destroys and generates again. It is self-germinating. The symbol of Gye Nyame looks like a circle when con...
Read more

Insane in the membrane: Sticking two fingers up to the virginity test

By -
Image
Colonisation from within of the female form © MisBeee Writes There has been a slew of media stories since the start of the year fixated on the supposed potency of the female form and the responsibility women have with making their bodies less desirable to the opposite sex. The idea that a 16-year old girl groomed her married 47-year-old religious education teacher into having an affair, according to UK judge Joanna Greenberg QC , was one that stuck in my mind. It got me recalling the experience of a friend of mine whose mother directed her to wearing a dressing gown over her night dress whenever she ventured out of her room. The extra layer was supposed to act as deterrent against the licentious attacks she suffered most nights at the hands of her stepfather. It didn’t. More recently, fresh efforts by an MP in the Indonesian district of Jember to introduce the controversial 'two-finger' or virginity test to schoolgirls before they can graduate have been denoun...
Read more

British-Ghanaian TV personalities share their career tips

By -
Image
If you think you've exhausted all options when progressing your career, there is always something else you can try. That's what I took away from the Star 100's 'In Conversation' session with TV and KissFM radio presenter Melvin Odoom and Sky TV newsreader Claudia-Liza Armah on 25 February. MisBeee with Claudia-Liza and Melvin Odoom who have both forged careers on British TV screens You couldn't pick more wildly different personalities if you tried. Melvin, who has Ga and Fante roots, had me gripped even before the session started. He mixed easily with the audience, renewed my faith that some celebrities are down to earth, and effortlessly had us 'catchin joke' throughout his talk.  Claudia-Liza exposed her nerdy side and had me enthralled at how years of parent-enforced incarceration (the story of my life as the daughter of immigrant Ghanaian parents) had resulted in her becoming somewhat of a TV expert. At one stage during...
Read more

Vlog: Chieftaincy in Ghana - time for modernisation or time for an end?

By -
Image
Although on the surface it seems Ghana's archaic chieftaincy structures have survived colonialism and are still celebrated and revered in modern times, I did not realise how much influence neighbouring tribes and British rule have had on the institution. Alhassan Mbalba and Queen Mother Naa Tsotsoo Soyoo I © MisBeee Writes Star 100 UK's seminar: 'Tribes: Chieftaincy in Ghana' brought together four speakers representing the Akans, GaDangmes, Ewes and Northerners to shed some light on the intricacies of this much-celebrated institution. Jamestown chieftaincy According to Her Royal Highness (HRH) Queen Mother Naa Tsotsoo Soyoo I, the current chieftaincy tradition used among the GaDangme people was adopted from the Akans. She also explained that enstoolment of the chiefs in Jamestown was decided by the British who governed the Jamestown area - hence the English name.  Ghana and the Levites During the seminar, the strong connection between the Hebr...
Read more