ABSTRACT
Cocoa is grown principally in West Africa, Central and South America and Southeast Asia. In order of annual production size, the eight largest cocoa-producing countries at present are Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Indonesia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Brazil, Ecuador and Malaysia (Figure 3.1). These countries together produce about 4.1 million metric tonnes representing ~95% of world production (ICCO 2011). In the early 1970s cocoa production was concentrated in Ghana, Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire and Brazil, but it has now expanded to areas such as the Pacific region, where countries such as Indonesia have shown spectacular growth rates in production (ICCO 2008).
