Dbq Essay On Chocolate

Do you know how chocolate is made? You may have envisioned chocolate waterfalls and streams, with oompa-loompas making chocolate, and some nice man running it all, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Most chocolate farming in the world takes place in Côte d’Ivoire or Ivory Coast, where there are massive amounts of illegalities, economical and biological devistations. In this essay I will prove the point that chocolate production is terrible for Ivory Coast, because of its economic and biological hardships towards the country.

Côte d’Ivoire is a poor country. The largest source of money it has is its chocolate production (31% of their total economy). Many cocoa farmers are illiterate, and can’t pay for proper schooling. Therefore

(Document C) Since people who grow chocolate sell it for very little, they end up getting a very small amount of the money, 10% of the value of the bar to be exact. Most of the money that is made goes to the owners, the workers only get about 5% of the chocolate bars which is spread out between all the workers, which makes the people very poor, and unable to afford basic necessities.“Cocoa growers are typically illiterate, and use outdated growing methods because they can’t afford them. Their communities have poor education and healthcare systems, with a lack of electricity and decent sanitization, with the only water available being a communal well.” (F) Since the Cocoa growers are so poor, they can’t buy anything with their own money and it isn’t easy to progress in society. This makes it very hard to get out of the cocoa farming life. People can’t support themselves enough to get into school, while being a cocoa worker. Thus they can’t stop being a cocoa farmer, continuing their role in the terrible chocolate

The forests of Côte d’Ivoire have been cut down and are mostly gone, replaced with cocoa farms. Many animals that were once there are now critically endangered or extinct due to deforestation. (D) Since people are now cutting down forests and replacing them with cocoa farms, a lot of animals have lost their homes and communities. This has gone to an extreme level, as now most of the animals that seemed as if they could never go extinct now have, and many are critically endangered because of all the deforestation. Not to mention the effects on the environment deforestation has on climate change. The tools used to aid deforestation are normally gas powered, which adds carbon to the atmosphere, and they are also killing the only things that take carbon out of the atmosphere, the trees. Carbon in the atmosphere heats up the earth, and causes global warming, all because people are making more cocoa farms. A significant portion of the Ivory coast’s protected forests have been cut down to make room for illegal cocoa farms. An Ohio State professor and his colleagues surveyed protected forests in Côte d’Ivoire and discovered that 74% of all the forests had been cut down to make way for the aforementioned cocoa farms(D). Even though Côte d’Ivoire is trying to protect forests, their defenses aren’t strong enough because of the terrible economy. Almost every single country uses