Cocoa Production: Ghana

Well I thought it was about time that we took a closer look at some of the biggest chocolate producing countries. As Ghana produces somewhere in the region of one-quarter of the world’s cocoa beans, I figured this would be a good place to start. Cocoa is an extremely important part of the country’s economy and it has been grown here since the mid 1900s. Ghana was at one time the world leader in terms of cocoa production but it was hit by a dramatic drop in prices on the world market in the 1970s. This forced many producers to abandon cocoa production altogether in favour of more lucrative crops. However, as prices stabilised and production was encourage, people have been tempted back to the wonderful cocoa tree and the country is back up to the top of world production.

One of the reasons for the success of Ghana in the cocoa production stakes is probably the fact that it produces some top-quality cocoa beans. Most of this is exported to other countries and made into chocolate. In fact, much of the cocoa produced around the world is grown for export: the countries that make the most chocolate don’t actually grow the trees themselves, as they don’t have the right climate. As with other African cocoa producers, most of the cocoa beans grown in Ghana are from smallholdings. There are somewhere in the region of two million cocoa farms in Ghana, which sounds like an incredible number but when you consider that most of them only produce a relatively small amount, it makes sense. Many farmers are at the mercy of fluctuating world prices and this can have a dramatic impact on their livelihood from one year to the next.

How Chocolate is Made

Unfortunately, chocolate production isn’t something that can really be done in a domestic kitchen very easily. It’s a shame as it would be great to be able to whisk up a batch of chocolate bars on demand. For the time being though, I think we’ll need to leave it to the experts and make do with flapjacks or muffins.

Chocolate production can either be large scale or it can be a more arty pastime, with individual recipes being created and perfected by chocolatiers and sold by the item. Generally speaking though, you’d need anything up to 600 cocoa beans to make 1kg of chocolate. Obviously, the better the quality, the more beans you’ll require, as a higher cocoa content means a better bar.

Once the beans have been shelled, ground and the liquor extracted, the other ingredients can be added to the mix. Again, the amounts will very much depend on the quality of the final chocolate product but it will be cocoa butter, sugar (for milk and white chocolate), vanilla for flavouring and some letchitin, which is an emulsifying that helps bind everything together. The product will now resemble chocolate as we know it but it still needs to be pressed, in order to refine it more and give it a nice smooth texture. There is one last process that many types of chocolate will have to endure and this is called ‘conching’. This is another type of pressing machine but much more laborious as it can sometimes take days to produce the required texture. However, it’s an important element of chocolate making, particularly in higher grade products, as it really determines the final flavour of the chocolate.

Chocolate Ingredients

Obviously, cocoa beans are a pretty important ingredient in chocolate but what else is required to produce your favourite sweet treat? Well, this isn’t actually a straightforward question to answer and it really depends on the variety and quality of chocolate. Chocolate now takes on so many different forms that’s it’s possible to include any number of ingredients in a product and still classify it under the label of ‘chocolate’. However, for the purposes of easy reading, I’ll stick to the basics. There are pretty much just five main ingredients that are needed to create chocolate and here they are:

Cocoa liquor
Not to be confused with alcohol! This is the most important ingredient and the higher the liquor content, the better quality the chocolate is. Once the beans have dried, the shells are removed and the central part, or ‘nib’ is ground. This process produces a lot of heat so it melts and becomes the liquor. Dark chocolate has the highest amount of liquor so if you want a real chocolate hit; this is the variety to buy.

Cocoa butter
This is the residue from the pressing process and what is left once the liquor has been extracted. As well as being used for chocolate, it also makes a pretty good moisturiser.

Sugar
This is essential in order to turn the chocolate into a sweet treat. Without sugar chocolate has a very bitter taste, much loved by the Mayans and Aztecs but probably not as popular with modern sweet teeth.

Milk or milk powder (milk and white chocolate)
As the name ‘milk chocolate’ suggests, these types of chocolate will contain either milk or milk powder and this is what gives the chocolate its creamy taste and paler flavour. Dark chocolate retains some of the bitter characteristics of the cocoa but this is indiscernible in most brands of milk and white chocolate.

Vanilla
This is primarily added as a flavouring and is present in most bars of chocolate, to a greater or lesser extent. The combination of cocoa and vanilla is a pretty good one so I assume that it’s just one of those things that somebody tried, everybody liked and no one has changed since.

Processing the Cocoa Bean

So, how exactly does a knobbly looking pod, filled with a load of little beans end up being a delicious bar of smooth, creamy chocolate? Well, there’s a pretty complicated process involved and I’m happy to leave it to the professionals and just enjoy the end results.

Cocoa pods are ready to pick when they’ve turned green. They have to be harvested at just the right time to ensure the correct amount of cocoa butter, which in turn will have a big impact on the final flavour of the chocolate. The seeds are removed from the pod, along with the rind and the rest of pod is tossed aside, no longer required. After harvesting comes fermentation and this is basically the process that separates the seeds from the pulp and begins the transformation into the more recognisable and usable cocoa beans. All the seeds and pulp are laid out on racks for a number of days. The pulp goes gooey and drains away, leaving behind the wonderful seeds. It’s at this stage that the seeds are promoted and can now be called ‘beans’. The beans then need to dry out completely before they can be used to create chocolate. This can be done naturally under the blazing sun, or artificially in big heated vats. Most producers choose the natural method and I have to say I like the idea of my cocoa beans having a bit of a sunbathe.

And now the beans are ready to safely stored before undergo a magical transformation into chocolate.

The Main Cocoa Growing Regions

Despite originating in Central and South America, cocoa is now grown in a much larger area and the biggest producers are actually in West Africa. This is due to the expansion of production and the opening of new markets. It’s all down to supply and demand really and people will always want chocolate. It’s one of those products that works on two levels. It can be fantastically expensive and saved for an extremely special occasion or it can just be a simple treat – a bar of chocolate bought from the newsagents at the end of a busy day. For that reason, it will always be popular and it was necessary to find new areas to produce it. Currently, there are eight major cocoa producing countries in the world. They are:

Ivory Coast
Ghana
Indonesia
Brazil
Nigeria
Cameroon
Malaysia
Ecuador

There are obviously countless others but these are the big players and the ones that supply most of the world’s cocoa beans. Production does tend to change year on year and will very much depend on the climatic conditions and the harvest for that particular year. However, The Ivory Coast and Ghana tend to produce around half of all the cocoa, which is the equivalent to a whole lot of chocolate bars. It’s quite nice to know, however, that most of the cocoa produced in Africa is grown on relatively small farms, rather than huge plantations. These farms tend to be owned and run by families, ensuring that profits can be fed back into the family business.