The world’s biggest cocoa grower plans to trace beans from farms to ports as it seeks to protect forests and root out illegal plantations.
Ivory Coast will soon conduct a feasibility study for the plan, with the view to establish a traceability system for cocoa from December next year, industry regulator Le Conseil du Cafe-Cacao said in a document handed to reporters Wednesday.
The West African country, which accounts for almost two-fifths of global cocoa output, is under pressure from chocolate manufacturers and donors to stamp out production in protected areas. The nation had 16 million hectares (40 million acres) of forests in 1960, but this had fallen to 3 million hectares in 2018, with farmers producing as much as 500,000 tons of cocoa per season in protected areas, or about a quarter of its annual production.
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