Seventy percent. That’s the figure that kept running through my mind as I stared at the landscape outside the air-conditioned van.
That landscape lay in the Ashanti region of Ghana, which was where I found myself late last November, a guest of Zürich-based Barry Callebaut, one of the world’s largest cocoa producers. The company had invited more than a dozen journalists to this part of West Africa to impress upon us the challenges it faces as it tries to secure a stable, sustainable supply of quality cocoa for the world’s delectation.