chapter i

And I Found Myself In A Garden

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The sun was past its zenith. Lazily humming into late afternoon on a Friday but not quite dark yet, I found myself strolling through Selassie’s garden. Or rather, Midunu Institute’s, Selassie’s company’s, garden. It might have been the dulling rays of the sun, or the breeze softly rustling the leaves of the mighty trees shading us, but I found myself in a state of sleep-wake. I closed my eyes and imagined the garden we were strolling through was a forest. Man-made, yes, but curated to feel like a jungle. And from this everlasting source would be the essence of the chocolate made. The indescribable blend of flavors melting in your mouth.

I opened my eyes and I was back by Selassie’s side. There were trees of guava and other fruit trees. Bushes of local basil, plants of num num, local greens of alefu, gboma, boko boko. Diverse and directed to her ever evolving craft of chocolate making. She was remarking on how her vision had been temporarily supplanted by her gardener. Anyone with a gardener in Accra could tell this tale. With Selassie, though, there is an extra level to it. Because her vision must be met and, yes, there is allowance for the Ghana system to push and fight back against it, but it won’t stop her.

With that, her vision of what cocoa could be is taking shape. Years of hard work, physically, mentally, spiritually are the reason for this. Now, that vision is becoming what it should be for the cocoa sector. An alternative that adds value to cocoa here on our soil, by us, and for those across the value chain - to the farmers, who have missed out on all that love for cocoa the world has. Monetarily speaking, of course.

We are back inside the house, or rather, the chocolate factory. Her parent’s house in Tesano has undergone a transformation. Here in Selassie’s familial home, her team make chocolate and curate dinners of a kind I am sure you have not experienced in Accra. She tells me of the process by which she onboards a team member. This is no ‘submit your CV and Motivation letter and you got the job’-type of application going on here. 

To join Selassie’s team an applicant must undergo an 11-month internship program that starts off with theory on the science of cooking, techniques and food safety matters. The applicant is also made to supplement this theory with their own research finally culminating in practicals that once completed satisfactorily ends with them in the kitchen getting their hands dirty for the dinners and/or chocolatier-ing.

This is an art. 

A discipline. 

A dedication. 

Selassie expects her employees to be scholars in food and chocolate making. Formally educated or not. For her ‘cocoa beans are a fine product, not a commodity.’ So another dimension to the question of what cocoa can do for us is revealed to me. Investing in the human to make magic. To make something that was not there before. 

I buy a box Hand Crafted Chocolate Truffles by Midunu before leaving. I open the box and there is a small message to receive me:

Chef Created, Africa Inspired, Handcrafted in Ghana.

Below this are the different flavors of the chocolate truffles in the box. There is Rose, Dawadawa, Pepper Fruit, Prekese to name the ones that were familiar to me. For those unfamiliar, Selassie points to a QR code that then directs me to Midunu’s site which has blurbs of information on the other flavors. Selassie tells me how she wants to do more by telling the story of where the ingredients are coming from and from whom. As she elaborates on how and what she wants to cultivate (literally and metaphorically) with the farmers her eyes sparkle. 

‘They should grow what they want. They should have the power to determine the price…’ 

It echos in me. I see a vaster version of Selassie’s garden on a farm. 

Time slips and the sun is on its course down, and I am pulling out of Midunu’s driveway. I reflect on what I have seen at Midunu, the story Selassie has told. The question of scale comes up and with that of growth potential for Midunu. But that is the wrong question. At least, if you are thinking of growth in the conventional sense. Rather, the question of diversity and resilience is posed. An economy of alternatives. An economy where people are put first. The farmers. The crafters of the chocolate. Biodiversity. Economic diversity. 

It seems far off, as if in a dream, only reached in sleep.

chapter ii

Cocoa Today

—

My visit to Selassie was brought on by a couple of things. One being my interest in seeing what an alternative cocoa economy looks like amidst the ongoing collapse of the sector unfolding slowly before our eyes. But also, as a reaction to the recent hike in cocoa prices we are witnessing as a result of poor harvests in Ghana and Ivory Coast.

The current cocoa sector has gone from worse to worse over the decades until we find ourselves in the predicament we are in today, that is, with Galamsey (small scale gold mining) providing a better option to making money than cocoa farming is.

Galamsey is what we call small scale gold mining and it has always been a complimentary activity for some farming communities across the country. In recent times, however, the nature of Galamsey has turned rather ugly (or uglier, I should say). Small bands of gold miners gain concessions from local authorities and with the help of youth from the area, illegally mine gold, in the process wrecking havoc on the agricultural lands and their water sources. But, and this is an entirely different topic altogether, it must be said, large-scale legal gold mining isn’t any better when it comes to destruction of the land and/or water. No extractive activity that demands ripping the earth and applying poisons is good for the earth. What is different is, government has drawn a line and said one is legal and the other illegal. By doing this it has torn open a wound that has been festering.

Back when cocoa was prosperous work, families and townships could be built from cultivating the bean. Now they are split up. 

The crisis of Galamsey is in many ways an indication of the failure of the cocoa sector to build a truly resilient system. And that means across all levels. From farmer to national prosperity. Yes, cocoa has done that for Ghana (to some degree) over many decades, but now, its beginning to play second fiddle to other more enticing ‘enterprises.’ 

Galamsey and cocoa are connected by two things (1) the laborers involved in Galamsey are former cocoa farmers (to some degree) and (2) more concretely, the lands that are being exploited to mine gold are formally agricultural lands, including, cocoa lands. 

Questions of land-use invariably work their way up to questions of land ownership. 

These questions of land ownership, in Ghana, are sometimes best not sought after because of where it could lead you. But to put it ‘not-so-bluntly’ the custodians of these lands have pivoted into an addiction to money-making and that, in this instance, is small-scale illegal gold mining. 

Ghana’s land tenure system is governed by three overlapping structures, (1) formal state ownership (2) communal / customary / stool lands and (3) family/private ownership. But when it comes to mineral resources, the state has authority. The Galamsey crisis is a failure of leadership on multiple levels. No one can or would be able to use the agricultural land differently if there was not permission ‘from above.’

Of course, going back to cocoa, we can look at the reasons why cocoa farming has waned in its attractiveness. Reduced yields due to many factors including, dare I say it, climate change, dated agriculture practices, invasive pests and diseases, and overuse of the land, deteriorating the quality of soil, have posed a risk to the sector which is beginning to bear nasty fruits. 

But, I would say, on a deeper level, our approach to the cocoa sector has always been an extractive exercise. From this, we have never opened up the possibilities of seeing the bean and everything surrounding it as a ‘fine product, and not a commodity…’ 

This approach has spilt into the ways we have developed the industry. And when I speak of industry I mean the land, the people working the land, and the social systems evolved with the bean. Though there has been spiritual and even religious connections made with cocoa bean over the years, the underlying mantra of ‘extracting to make money’ has dominated. 

The wound of the cocoa farmer earning less and less for his work has deepened. Which parent would want to continue to labor and not be able to provide for their family? Which child would want to continue the back breaking work of their parents and not see the returns needed to make a living of their own?

The wound of the land degrading in quality, in nutrients, also bears true. We have taken and taken and taken from it, only feeding it synthetic chemicals for short term gain but long term devastation.

These wounds stem from a philosophy. The land, the farmers, they are all a means to an end.

Of course, this extractive approach has its origins…

chapter iii

Golden Goose

—

As a colony under the British Empire, the Gold Coast was a pearl among the riches of the empire because of the gold wealth it produced. By 1911, Ghana had become the world’s larger producer of cocoa [Kuusaana, Adu-Gyamfi, Darkwa, 2021] to add to the gold. And with this growing wealth further co-evolutions of the cocoa bean and the Gold Coast’s socio-economy grew. Land tenures changed from short term to longer terms, as cocoa farmers bought larger tracts of land to farm (should be said that tenures still typically range from 3-5 years in lease arrangements and size of farms 2-5 acres). Roads and rail were built to more efficiently move the commodity from countryside to the port for export, shipped off to far away lands where the bean was transformed to chocolate. Government budgets were designed around cocoa export projections. Cocoa farmers built cement homes in a sea of mud huts. Our landscape changed. Our cocoa farmers profited. The colonial administration did as well. 

And the world salivated for chocolate. 

Then Ghana’s independence was won and under Nkrumah the Golden Goose continued to lay its eggs. In fact, Nkrumah’s administration used the Cocoa Marketing Board (CMB) to try and reduce the price of cocoa paid at the farm (while the price of cocoa increased on global markets) which caused a rift between the government and a main farming bloc in the Asante Region eventually leading to the creation of the National Liberation Movement (NLM), what would become the opposition to Nkrumah’s CPP government.

Nkrumah’s government would not be the last to try and squeeze as much from the cocoa farms as possible. The Cocoa Marketing Board evolved into Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) in 1979. The political landscape had shifted quite dramatically since Nkrumah. Coup d’états. Military governments. Failed promises to the people. But the approach toward cocoa was the same - the Goose must continue to lay eggs. 

Then Rawlings’s two revolutions sought to end the wrought of corruption in the country with 1981 revolution being heralded as ‘the revolution to end all revolutions.’ The Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) was duly formed and Ghana’s political climate stabilized. But the economy was struggling and a decision to engage with the USA’s Bretton Woods Institute and its Structure Adjustment Programs (SAP) was commenced to turn the fortunes of the country.

A new global political philosophy was beginning to reign its head and SAPs was the doctrine that symbolized its market values. Neo-liberalism. Thatcher-ism. Reagan-ism. Whatever you’d want to call it, for Ghana what it meant was (1) the opening up of its economy to increased foreign investments and the (2) shrinking of the size of government to be more fiscally sound. What it meant for the government’s involvement in the cocoa sector was the removal of subsidies, reductions in credit schemes, and extension services. Job losses were huge, unemployment rife, and the informal sector began its exponential boom as people sought other means to make a living.

Where the government withdrew, private sector stepped in to support the struggling sector. The Golden Goose must continue to lay eggs! The major chocolate brands of the world had built their empires on chocolate and the cocoa was still significantly coming from Ghana and Ivory Coast. If you want something done right you gotta do it yourself. To an extent. But the fundamental structure and approach to cocoa farms remained the same. Extract. Exploit.

Chemicals were pumped into agricultural lands to increase yields. COCOBOD continued to be politicized to ‘manage’ the price of cocoa to the ‘benefit’ of our farmers. But more local and foreign players were entering the fray. Niche Cocoa and Fairafric standout in that respect. Adding value to the chocolate here in Ghana and selling to both local and international markets. Ghana’s own Golden Tree chocolate is a great bar, but pick up a bar today or 20 years ago, and there is no difference.

What I have tried to do with this “poor man’s” history of Ghana’s political history and cocoa’s evolution, or lack thereof, is show that all the while there was no meaningful sustained directive from the major stakeholders to invest, truly, in the people in cocoa (the farmers, their families, the townships) and the land. The evidence of that is in this ‘Galamsey over cocoa’ decision people in the sector are making (not all of them of course).

This is what has informed me taking a look at Selassie’s work. And there are others. Looking beyond the commodity. Seeing the ‘fine product.’

chapter iv

And I Found Myself In A Forest

—

I have visited a few cocoa farms over the years, not many, but enough to get an overall idea of what they look like, and get a feel. They tend to be well vegetated. Tucked mostly under trees, but in some cases, a large tract of land would be dedicated to the just the cocoa. Typically, there is roughly 1.5 - 2 meters spacing between each tree and not much is grown in this space. Ordinarily, there is one farmer and a helper dedicated to the portion of land (3-5 acres). Water is sourced from a nearby river, but by and large the farms are rain dependent, tying the success of cocoa harvests to the plight of the rainy seasons. In Ghana, the cocoa growing area is spread between the coastal zones up to the tropical forest transition zone, or the Bono and Bono East regions. Most of what I have visited is in the Eastern Region and Ashanti.

I had a brush with Galamsey activities on my own farm a few years back. My farm was in the Eastern Region, about 10 minutes drive from Aburi, in a town called Pokrom. I was ‘trying’ to do green peppers, tomatoes and a host of other veggies with mild success. On the outer edges of the rather hilly farm I once stumbled upon an interesting setup. Slices of wood had been burnt to suggest a camp fire, food items tossed to the side, and some tin buckets laid about. There was a hole in the ground and a contraption to wheel what I can only imagine to be the bucket in and out of said hole. My farmer was by my side and he labeled the scene for my ignorant eyes. This was 2018. The Galamsey menace came to peak national attention getting to the 2020 elections with the whole ‘Stop Galamsey’ campaign. The Galamsey operation on my farm suggested a few things to me, (1) those involved were not necessarily perturbed with being found out, (2) they were willing to encroach on private lands, and (3) anyone could possibly get up and go do some Galamsey. Looking back now at that campfire, it also suggests that this menace is far more pervading than we can process.

I thought of my farmer and my farm. We were barely eking out a profit. If it wasn’t for the investments my senior partner was making into the farm, there wouldn’t be a farm. My farmer would be doing his vegetable farming on a much smaller scale. Price of fertilizer were creeping higher and higher since government was removing its subsidies. Weather increasingly less predictable. And of course the hours of toil. At what point would this low cost, highly profitable Galamsey operation begin to turn his eye from growing food? Who wouldn’t be interested in another easier faster way to riches?

Midunu is looking to set up to empower farmers by giving them the option to grow and sell what they want at their price. Midunu makes use of indigenous crops, whether it is infusing it in the chocolate that is curated or having them take center stage in the exquisite dinners hosted at their Tesano factory. The dinners are culinary explorations into the possibilities of our ecology. In this relationship, a diversity is being built. One for the farmer to grow more on their land and therefore increase biodiversity and resilience to climatic and other shocks. But then there is the economic diversity. Commercial possibilities to make more out of something.

And then there is the cocoa tree. The physiology of the plant allows for much more than just chocolate making. KOA-IMPACT, for instance, a cocoa juice-making company, squeeze the cocoa bean to make delicious juice. Along similar paths, Theia Cafe, a family-owned cafe located in Airport Residential in Accra, have a wonderful tea they make from the cocoa husk. A tea that I guarantee touches your soul. Fix the Chain, an agri-waste innovations company, use the husk which is usually considered waste material from the cocoa farm to serve as the base on which they grow mushrooms, a great meat substitute. Tale Beer, a specialty craft beer company using indigenous ingredients to infuse in their beers, have managed to use cocoa to create a stout, taking the not-too-friendly beer properties of butter and oil out. It’s delicious. Then there is Skin Gourmet, an edible skin care company, who use the cocoa butter in their skin care products.

Investing in the cocoa farmers by increasing their knowledge base beyond growing cocoa for the bean could open up these avenues for further business ventures and collaborations. Plenty Plenty, a holistic cocoa products startup, reimagines what can be done with the entire cocoa plant and asks ‘what would the Ghanaian way of producing and processing cocoa look like if we strip it of its colonial context?’ 

There is also the case to be made for the experience of being on the cocoa farm and making these alternative products as a touristic enterprise. Obviously, a cocoa farmer may not be cut out to host tourists on their farm, but a well-to-do partnership can bring about additional revenue, and also that added excitement of wanting to be in the countryside, possibly turning the disparate youth back into looking into cocoa farming. A problem at the forefront of many NGOs and associated cocoa organizations agendas. 

But the question that lingers, would it be enough? If this is what the cocoa sector had been doing all along and illegal Galamsey came around, would these alternatives keep farmers and all those involved away?

The question could be framed differently. Would this alternative alleviate poverty? Would it curb greed? 

It is all theoretical. All fuzzy on the edges. 

In trying to imagine Selassie’s vision come to life, I find myself in a shaded forest. A gentle sun streaking through peeps in the branches and a sheen off the fruit hanging on the trees. I stroll, crunching on the dying leaves littered on the forest floor, churning into compost. I bend down and grab a hand full of the moist rich earth. A worm wiggles its way up to the surface…

What is a forest? A mega-system that consists of small to large subsystems that work in constant motion against and with each other. Flows of materials. Energy moving back and forth. Sun’s rays. Long and short waves. Light. Heat. Cold. Wind. Micro-organisms eating dead things to eek out black gold. Stocks rise and fall. Nutrients depleted then restored. States of being change. Water into water vapor, into clouds, into rain. Disequilibrium. Equilibrium. And in this basket of chaos a delicate balance is kept. 

But why do I talk of a forest? Well, in the same way that science will look to nature to innovate on applied technologies (ex. the inspiration drawn from a birds flight in making the airplane) that transform our lives, I want us to expand our scope to look to nature to innovate on socio-economic systems. Biomimicry in other words, but on a systems level.

And what does that have to do with Cocoa? To investing in the people? Investing in the land?

We must look to create a forest. 

Currently, the socio-economic system we have values big players (big companies), players that can grow fast (companies with rapid growth potential), and old players (established companies). If you don’t fit this mold, you are pretty much on your own. We need all the players I have mentioned above. 

But we also need diversity because within that we build resilience. When socio-economic stresses hit, a diverse system is much better able to resist and adapt to the stresses. 

Just like a forest. 

And it is here that I must end this foray into possibilities. But as we take stock of the damage being wrecked to our lands and water bodies due to greed, we must ask ourselves why people are making the choices they are making then pose an alternative that seeks to answer that. An alternative that is built on a different perspective based on values of diversifying the land and the investing in the people.