Your chocolate comes with a side order of deforestation

Enlarge / A cocoa pod, this one grown in Asia.Tan Dao Duy

Cocoa farmers in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire make less than a dollar a day. And there are almost 2 million of them; the two countries are the world’s largest cocoa producers, supplying two-thirds of the global supply. Cocoa is the primary perennial crop in both places.

However, there are no up-to-date, accurate maps of their cocoa plantations. This is a problem since cocoa is known to be a primary driver of deforestation in the region. Besides decimating biodiversity that may never recover, clear-cutting forests to plant cocoa (or

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