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Roughly two-thirds
of the entire world's cocoa is produced in Western Africa, with
close to half of the total sourced from Côte d'Ivoire. Like many food
industry producers, individual cocoa farmers are at the mercy of
volatile world markets. The price can vary from ?500 ($945) to
?3,000 ($5,672) per ton, in the space of just a few years. While
investors trading in cacao can dump shares at will, individual cocoa
farmers cannot increase production or abandon trees at anywhere near
that pace. When cocoa prices drop, farmers in West Africa sometimes
cut costs by using slave labor. It has been alleged that an
estimated 90% of cocoa farms in Côte d'Ivoire have used some form of
slave labor in order to remain viable.[10] According to the World
Cocoa Foundation, some 50 million people around the world depend on
cocoa as a source of livelihood. |
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Despite some disagreement in the EU about the
definition, chocolate is any product made primarily of
cocoa solids and cocoa fat. The different flavours of
chocolate can be obtained by varying the time and
temperature when roasting the beans, by adjusting the
relative quantities of the cocoa solids and cocoa fat,
and by adding non-chocolate ingredients. |
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Chocolate most commonly comes in dark, milk, and white
varieties, with cocoa solids contributing to the brown
coloration. |
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Production costs can be decreased by reducing cocoa
solid content or by substituting cocoa butter with a
non-cocoa fat, but allowing chocolate to be made with
vegetable oils could have serious consequences for the
millions of growers whose livelihoods depend on cocoa.
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There
are two main jobs associated with creating chocolate
candy, chocolate makers and chocolatiers. Chocolate
makers use harvested cacao beans and other ingredients
to produce couverture chocolate. Chocolatiers use the
finished couverture to make chocolate candies (bars,
truffles, baked goods, etc.). |
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Chocolate is created from the cocoa bean. A cacao tree
with fruit pods in various stages of ripening |
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