Peter Baskett

One hundred forty million hybrid cocoa seedlings have reportedly been raised as part of a COCOBOD initiative to revive dying farms infected with Cocoa Swollen Shoot Virus Disease (CSSVD). At BarTalks, we recently wrote about the progress that Ghana’s Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) has made with their National Cocoa Rehabilitation Programme (NCRP). Farms that were once

Chocolate has been around for millennia in various forms, and people have experimented with different methods of processing it for nearly as long. Even today, researchers at the American Chemical Society have discovered a new Cocoa post-harvest treatment that could serve as an alternative to traditional fermentation. The new method, called ‘moist incubation’, reportedly produces

Cocoa farmers in Côte d’Ivoire have faced several challenges recently, including ‘catastrophic’ growing conditions that are predicted to significantly reduce the amount of cocoa the country can produce this season.  April marks the start of the cocoa mid-crop, where conditions are wet, and rainfall is expected in abundance. This year, however, the West African cocoa

According to the Ghana Cocoa Board’s (COCOBOD) Chief Executive, Hon Joseph Boahen Aidoo, COCOBOD will soon start returning newly rehabilitated cocoa farms to their owners. This news follows the claimed success of The National Cocoa Rehabilitation Programme (NCRP), which aimed to cure cocoa farms of Cocoa Swollen Shoot Viral Disease (CSSVD) and introduce several measures

Ghana is reportedly expecting a significant decrease in their Cocoa production when compared to the previous season. The 2021/22 Cocoa output is expected to be down by a minimum of 31%, as a result of ‘catastrophic’ growing conditions. It has not been an easy year for the West African Cocoa farmers, with the pandemic introducing

The Cocoa farms of Ghana’s Western North Region have been the subject of rehabilitation under the National Cocoa Rehabilitation Programme (NCRP). These regions have been affected by the swollen shoot disease, which has had devastating effects on the country’s prime crop. Approximately 11% of Cocoa farms in the region, 51,537 hectares out of 487,386, have