96 COCOA AND CHOCOLATE 



fallow. But in the Gold Coast the " indolent " native 

 has created a new industry entirely native owned, and 

 in thirty years the Gold Coast has outstripped all the 

 areas of the world in quantity of produce. Forty years 

 ago the natives had never seen a cacao tree, now at 

 least fifty million trees flourish in the colony. This 

 could not have happened without the strenuous efforts 

 of the Department of Agriculture. The Gold Coast 

 now stands head and shoulders above any other pro- 

 ducing area for quantity. The problem of the future 

 lies in the improvement of quality, and difficult though 

 this problem be, we cannot doubt, given a fair chance, 

 that the far-sighted and energetic Agricultural Depart- 

 ment will solve it. Indeed, it must injustice be pointed 

 out that already a very marked improvement has been 

 made, and now fifty to one hundred times as much 

 good fermented cacao is produced as there was ten 

 years ago.* However, if a high standard is to be main- 

 tained, the work of the Department of Agriculture 

 must be supplemented by the willingness of the cacao 

 buyers to pay a higher price for the better qualities. 



The phenomenal growth of this industry is the more 

 remarkable when we consider the lack of roads and 

 beasts of burden. The usual pack animals, horses and 

 oxen, cannot live on the Gold Coast because of the 

 tsetse fly, which spreads amongst them the sleeping 

 sickness. And so the native, used as he is to heavy 

 head-loads, naturally adopted this as his first method 

 of transport, and hundreds, of the less affluent natives 

 arrive at the collecting centres with great weights of 



* " Towards this latter result Messrs. Cadbury Bros., Ltd., 

 rendered great assistance. This firm sent representatives into the 

 country, who proved to the natives that they were willing to pay an 

 enhanced price for cocoa prepared in a manner suitable for their 

 requirements. A fair amount of cocoa was purchased by them, and 

 demonstrations were made in some places with regard to the proper 

 mode of fermentation." (The Agricultural and Forest Products of 

 British West Africa. Imperial Institute Handbook, by G. C. Dud- 

 geon). 



