According to Myhrvold, the cocoa tree was discovered by the Maya, Toltec, and Aztec peoples before 3000 years ago. Theobroma is the latin name for cocoa, which literally means “food of the gods”.
The chocolate is produced from a fruit called the cacao pod, that has an ovoid form and its ripening colour is yellow to orange. The seeds are taken from the Cacao pod dried and fermented to produce the cocoa bean that is used to create chocolate. Did you know that a cocoa tree needs between 3 to 5 years to bear fruits and that each tree produce 1000 beans a year (Bray, 2012)? One of the most important Commodities nowadays is chocolate, which is made from the cocoa tree. For many chocolate-producing counties, Commodities chocolate plays an enormous role in raising the country’s economy and lifestyle. The cocoa trade spread around the world in late fifteenth century, it’s considered one of the most important tools that give the country authority among other nations. Nowadays, many
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Western African countries supply more than 70% of the world cocoa, mostly Ghana and Ivory Coast (World Cocoa Foundation, 2012). The majority of the cocoa which grow and harvest in Western Africa is sold to chocolate companies that includes the largest and most known companies in the world such as Hershey’s, Mars, and Nestle (Mistrati, Miki, Romano, & U. Roberto, 2012). The high demand of chocolate increases child labor, human trafficking, and slavery. The average salary of a cocoa farmer is less than $2 per day, which is below poverty line. The outcome of low paid salary is child labor so they can keep the prices low (Kramer & Anna, 2013). Most of the Western African children start working at a young age because of the poverty, so they have to work to support their families. Most of the kids end up in cocoa farms, and others get sold to traffickers or farm