Trinidad, Brazil, and Ghana: three melting moments in the history of cocoa

This paper examines decline in cocoa production at three historical moments: Trinidad in the early 18th century, Brazil in the first half of the 20th century, and Ghana in the recent transition from colonialism to independence. In each, decline followed promising expansion. Conventional explanations have been based on biological, agronomic, and market factors. Following a commodity systems approach, we use the extant literature to focus in addition on labor control dilemmas and the consequences of state action and inaction. Throughout, use of the cocoa commodity system as the unit of analysis exposes important commonalities related to power, constraint, and motivation.