Cocoa to most individuals is suggestive of carefully and tastefully packed tins, or in chocolate form, of delightful little packages done up in neat silver paper and prettily tied with bows of silk ribbon. To others it means a welcome and fragrant breakfast or supper beverage. To few, indeed, does it represent anything else. The man in the street, if he thinks at all upon investing his savings in cocoa, argues that after all there is a limit to human digestion, particularly where sweetmeats are concerned, consequently he need not trouble himself about “futures” in cocoa for the field is at best a restricted one. It never occurs to him that the demand for every species of vegetable oil and fat is becoming more clamant every day. Somehow he never asks himself why Bournville, York and Bristol cocoa is 2s. 6d. per pound, and Dutch only 1s. per pound. He presumes, and if he tries it he knows, that one quality is better than the other, but it does not occur to him that there is something in the one beverage which is lacking in the other. The butter from the latter—the pure fat too expensive to eat, but not too expensive to incorporate in pomades for personal adornment, has been extracted. There is no more rigid limit to the demand for cocoa than to the demand for rubber; not only so, but nothing has yet appeared even on the horizon of our imagination that can take the place occupied to-day by the cocoa bean, both for internal and external consumption. This cannot be said with regard to rubber, wool or silk.

The total world’s supply is to-day close on a quarter of a million tons of cocoa per annum. The East and West Indies and the great Amazonian Valleys, have for generations poured their supplies into Europe, but it is only within the last thirty years that West Africa has made her influence felt upon the cocoa markets of Europe. It is very difficult to obtain reliable evidence as to the colonists who first introduced cocoa to West Africa, probably the credit for it belongs to the Portuguese, whose love of colonization is everywhere evinced by the plants, fruits and grain which they conveyed in past years from one continent to another.

Given a humid atmosphere, a well-watered land and a tropical sun, cocoa will grow almost anywhere up to a height of nearly 1500 feet. Of such lands enjoying atmospheric conditions highly suitable to the production of cocoa, there are nearly one million square miles in the tropical regions of the West African continent. San Thomé and Principe, with less than 300 square miles under cultivation, supply to the world’s markets over 30,000 tons of cocoa every year; if, therefore, but one quarter of the potential cocoa producing areas of West Africa could be brought under cultivation at the same rate, there could be produced over 25,000,000 tons of cocoa.

To-day cocoa is being cultivated in the German colonies of Togoland and Cameroons; in the Portuguese colonies of Cabenda, San Thomé and Principe; in the Belgian Congo; in the Spanish island of Fernando Po, and in the British colonies of the Gold Coast and Nigeria. In all these the production has distinctive features.

From the standpoint of plantation arrangements and the application of scientific methods, the Portuguese in San Thomé are easily first. This no doubt is due to the fact that for over twenty years the planters have been concentrating all their efforts upon the cocoa bean. Throughout their whole area San Thomé and the sister island of Principe are under cocoa cultivation and the traveller never gets away from the sour odour of fermenting cocoa. A series of high hills and deep valleys with numerous rivulets represent the physical features of the islands. The hill ranges, for the most part, rise tier above tier, until they culminate in the Pico da San Thomé with an altitude of just over 7000 feet. The summit of the peak is seldom seen, for the island lies bathed in mists, which warmed by a tropical sun provide the ideal cocoa-growing climate.

The streams which flow unceasingly down the hillsides are scientifically trenched so that a continuous supply of water traverses the cocoa groves all over the islands, and the farms in the centre of each group of plantations all enjoy a plentiful supply of excellent water.

The fermenting sheds are all of them organized in an up-to-date manner for which a knowledge of industries in other Portuguese colonies hardly prepares the traveller. Nowhere throughout West Africa are there such scientific and elaborate cocoa drying grounds as one sees on these Portuguese islands. The majority of cocoa planters in West Africa are satisfied with cemented drying grounds in open courtyards. The cocoa is spread out to dry and left in the open not only during the whole day, but throughout the night. On several roças on the cocoa islands, the Portuguese have, at enormous expense, fitted up drying grounds which are mechanically moved into shelter whenever a storm threatens. Doubtless it is due to the great care exercised by the Portuguese in the work of fermenting and drying that their cocoa is so uniformly good.

Altogether there are nearly 300 roças on the two islands and, with one or two exceptions, they are in Portuguese hands; there is a Belgian plantation, and one or two are owned by natives whose ability to make cocoa production a financial success is demonstrated by the fact that one who died recently left £6000 for the education of the children of San Thomé.

The cocoa plantations on these islands are all so compact and within such easy reach of the sea-shore that transport is quite easy. Both horses and mules live fairly well on the islands, and these, coupled with bullock carts and some 1500 kilometres of Decauville railway throughout the islands and running out to the pier, render unnecessary the porterage which constitutes such a problem for the cocoa planters in every other colony in West Africa. It is a melancholy thought that this industry, built up at so great cost to human life—both white and coloured—stands only a bare chance of permanence. The lack of indigenous labour, coupled with the absence of statesmanship on the part of the Home Government, can only lead to irretrievable disaster.

The nearest approach to the Portuguese systems of cocoa production is to be found in Belgian Congo, where physical and climatic conditions are almost identical with those of the Portuguese islands. The first plantations are met with close to the mouth of the river in the Mayumbe country, but before reaching the next one has to traverse nearly a thousand miles. These are situated at the confluence of the Aruwimi river and the main Congo, and there are besides several small plantations on the Aruwimi itself. As cocoa-producing enterprises, the only ones to take into serious consideration are those of the Mayumbe country, south of the Chiloanga—the Portuguese river, which enters the sea at Landana. The plantations are run under three separate interests, and may be classified as State controlled, Roman Catholic and Merchant. The merchants complain that their difficulty in obtaining labour is greatly increased owing to the missions and the State using forced labour for their plantations. It seems incredible that this should be so, but these complaints are neither new nor isolated. The Commission of Enquiry sent to the Congo by King Leopold had evidence before it which shewed that the Mission farms at least were largely staffed with forced labour. The following passage is an extract from the report of that Commission in 1905:

If the Belgian Government could concentrate upon a serious development of the Mayumbe country by laying down railways, making roads, building bridges, opening up creeks, and rivers, there is no reason why the Mayumbe country should not increase its yearly output of cocoa by many thousands of tons.

The Spanish contribution to the world’s supply is not yet or ever likely to be anything material, for as colonists in Africa the Spaniards have ceased to count.

In German colonies cocoa growing is extending rapidly and from a financial point of view satisfactorily. The German Administration in the Cameroons, however, seems to favour such enterprises mainly as European undertakings in which the natives are mere labourers. Within recent years, probably in view of the success of the Gold Coast production, some effort has been made to encourage the natives by gifts of seed and young plants to lay down their own plantations. But the prevailing German opinion has been set forth in a German report, published in Der Tropenpflanzer (No. 1, January, 1912), wherein it is stated:—

Whilst colonial Germans take this view, the native certainly will never emulate the Gold Coast tribes, for the African has a habit of acting up, or down, to European expectations. The Editor of Tropical Life truly remarked that whilst these views are held in Berlin, “Germany would never do any good with the Bakwiris and Dualas; neither did she with the Herreros, and so ‘punished’ them because they, poor wretches, could not understand the German method of ruling Africa as do the German Michels at home.”

There is some reason to believe that the cultivation of the cocoa bean began in Cameroons and Victoria some years earlier than that on the Gold Coast, and it is even claimed by some that the phenomenally successful industry of the British colony was commenced with a seed pod obtained from Ambas Bay.

There is probably no single feature in colonial enterprise which can compare with the cocoa romance of the British colony of the Gold Coast. The honour of having introduced the industry into that colony is eagerly debated. Everyone agrees that it belongs to either the Basel Mission through their introduction of West Indian Christians, or to a certain native carpenter returning from Ambas Bay, or Victoria. Mr. Tudhope, the Director of Agriculture, is inclined to give credit to the native, but it must be admitted that the Basel Mission authorities possess the most circumstantial evidence in support of their claim. One of their oldest missionaries at Christiansborg states that about the year 1885 he saw the original cocoa tree at Odumase; another, that he saw this tree in full bearing in 1895. It is instructive to recall that the first export, amounting to 80 lbs. weight, was in the year 1891—that is six years after the original tree was seen at Odumase.

The missionaries, however, readily admit that soon after their agents introduced cocoa at Odumase, a native arrived from, the Cameroon colony and planted beans at Mampong. From these two centres, fifteen miles apart, the industry has established itself in every district of the colony and penetrated ten days’ march beyond Kumasi.

The organization is of the simplest kind—purely and solely a native industry, few of the plantations being large ones, none more than about twenty-five to thirty acres and the majority not more than two to five acres. We saw none owned by white men, although I believe there are one or two, which are, however, quite insignificant. The volume of cocoa which pours out from the Gold Coast colony flows almost exclusively from countless small holdings spread all over the hinterland. The farms are not so close together as those of San Thomé, but the traveller cannot walk many miles anywhere without passing through the plantations of cocoa and palm trees.

The atmospheric conditions resemble the Mayumbe country and San Thomé, the rainfall varying between 32.09 and 54.92 per annum, otherwise the territory is not so well watered as the Belgian and Portuguese possessions. In spite of this, the colony can produce a quantity and quality of cocoa that compares well with other areas. When at the Botanical Gardens of Aburi, we saw a plot of cocoa measuring one and two-fifths acres with 259 trees planted fifteen feet apart. The yield from this plot between October 23rd and December 31st, 1909, was 18,200 pods. Mr. Anderson, reporting upon this experimental plantation says, “Such results will not often be exceeded in any cocoa-growing country.”

In the year 1891, we almost see that Gold Coast native offering for sale the first harvest of cocoa. It is only 80 lbs. in weight and with the greatest ease he carries it to the white man’s store. To the amazement of his native friends the grower received £4 for that basket of cocoa!

Twenty years later the export of 80 lbs. weight has grown to nearly 90 millions. Since the day that the native husbandman disposed of his 80 lbs. of cocoa, the industry has never wavered. We were informed by white men who have been long on the coast that when the natives realized the value of cocoa there was an impetuous and overwhelming demand for seed until competition became so keen that a sovereign a bean was the general rate!

In 1902 the export had exceeded £100,000; in 1907 it had passed half-a-million, and in 1911 leaving gold in the rear of competition for first place it raced away beyond the finger post of a million and a half sterling. The whole of this, be it remembered, is a native industry!

The Gold Coast natives are justly proud of their extensive enterprise and assert that they will not cease extending their plantations until every acre they can cultivate and every man they can use is producing cocoa.

Not the least interesting spectacle in the Gold Coast is the transport of cocoa, the bulk of the inland produce being carried by porters to the railhead, and sometimes the roadways as far as the eye can penetrate are one long line of cocoa bags on the heads of hundreds of carriers. This carrying trade has produced an extraordinary flow of free labour into the whole hinterland of the Gold Coast. At Adawso, a buying station nearly fifteen miles from the railhead, one firm alone employs in the season over 3000 carriers who cover the distance to the rail station of Pakro once, frequently twice, a day with a bag of cocoa. The remuneration being according to the quantity carried, there is an eagerness to earn the maximum within the twelve hours of daylight. The men who leave by daybreak will return about three o’clock in the afternoon, often to pick up another load and carry it to the railhead, returning again by moonlight.

The carriers are mostly Hausas, but the fame of the Gold Coast carrier traffic has spread far into the northern regions of Africa with the result that recognized caravan routes now come right down through the northern territories. These carriers, many of them from around and even beyond Lake Chad, drive herds of cattle down to the Gold Coast colony about harvest time. They sell the cattle and then carry cocoa for the season. When the main harvest is over and there is little cocoa carrying, they will purchase loads of kola nuts which they carry back with them to the far interior and sell en route at a considerable profit. Thus they make a threefold financial return—on the sale of cattle, cocoa carrying, and profits on the kola nut trade.

The transport of cocoa is chiefly in the hands of alien labour, and should the flow of this labour cease from any cause whatever, the cocoa industry would suffer a check from which it would take years to recover. The coastal regions are fairly secure, for most of the districts within twenty miles of the coast are reached by a daily service of motor lorries under the management of the European cocoa-buying firms. Many of the native farmers within thirty miles of Accra, however, with true African trading instinct prefer selling their cocoa at a higher price at the port of embarkation, and so have created the interesting system of “barrel rolling.” In the season these strongly bound and ponderous casks are purchased from the European stores, filled with cocoa, and rolled to the sea-shore. Travelling along the somewhat primitive Gold Coast roads one meets at frequent intervals perspiring natives struggling with the barrels which, filled with cocoa, weigh considerably over half-a-ton. They may be “holding on” to a barrel racing down a steep incline, or three of them straining their utmost to force the ponderous weight up a steep hill. Occasionally they come to grief, for we saw more than one cask which had fallen over a cliff into a deep gorge below. Generally speaking, three men will undertake to roll two barrels to the coast, the three concentrating their efforts upon a single barrel going uphill, while on the level road or down hill they control the two barrels between them. We met three such men who had rolled two casks for twenty-five to thirty miles, a task of two days, for which they receive 20s. per cask.

The problem which faces administrator, merchant and native producer is that of transport. This threatens to become acute, for we were informed by a merchant who recently journeyed beyond Kumasi that large consignments of cocoa were lost owing to the lack of transport facilities. At the same time, given a fair price for cocoa in the home market, just treatment for transport labourers, the extension of roads and light railways, there is no reason why a single ton of cocoa should fail to reach the coast.

In the Gold Coast colony the white man occupies his normal position in the tropics—the connecting link or middle-man between the European manufacturer and the native producer. The Government very wisely endeavours to keep the industry in the hands of the native farmers and assists them by sending lecturers through the colony, whose duty it is to advise the farmers upon pruning, fermentation, drying, the danger of pests, and the general principles of modern agricultural science. With inherent instinct, the British Government recognizes that the real asset of the colony is the indigenous inhabitant, whose material and moral progress is not only the first, but the truest interest of the State.

The other British colony in which cocoa has a future is Southern Nigeria. To read the Government reports of ten years ago there seemed little hope that the natives of this colony would become cocoa farmers, or indeed that they would ever do much more than vegetate in the agricultural world. Africa is the land of surprises, and more and more the African is surprising Europe by exploding “the lazy nigger theory.”

The Acting Secretary of Southern Nigeria, writing his 1903 report from Old Calabar, said:—

This is just what the Belgian and German Governments are proclaiming to-day.

At this period cocoa was just beginning to grip the native mind in Southern Nigeria; he had begun to “sow for his son to reap”; he had begun to understand something more “than the yam growing at his door”; he had in fact just dispatched 300,000 lbs. of cocoa to Europe. The very next year the Acting Governor was able to write: “There has been an enormous development in cocoa,” and the Southern Nigeria natives, as if in unconscious protest against the Governor’s 1903 report, poured into the European markets over 1,000,000 lbs. of cocoa beans! Two years later, the export had risen to 1,500,000 lbs. Turning to the Government report three years later again, we find that the export had again doubled itself, and was then over 3,000,000 lbs. “These figures,” said the Colonial Secretary, “indicate the extraordinary expansion that has taken place of late years in the cultivation of this plant.” Finally, turning to the most recent report, we find that the export has again doubled itself in two years, i.e. over 6,000,000 lbs.

The actual figures are as follows:—

It is somewhat doubtful whether this ratio of doubling the output every two years will be sustained, for it is considerably in excess even of the Gold Coast rates of increase. There are advantages possessed by Southern Nigeria which natural conditions deny to the Gold Coast—the heavy surf, and the lack of good shipping accommodation, tell heavily against the merchants and the native producers of the Gold Coast, whereas it is possible to load and unload cargoes in Lagos without their suffering any damage from sea water. Again, the cocoa areas of Southern Nigeria enjoy in the main a more generous water supply than those of the Gold Coast.

The general statistics of the cocoa trade, compiled upon the materialistic basis of tons and sovereigns, are not without interest to the man outside the cocoa community. For example, the Portuguese at present produce more cocoa on their two little islands of San Thomé and Principe than any other cocoa-producing area in the world. They produce from those 400 square miles of volcanic rocky land more than twice the quantity produced by the Republic of Venezuela with a tropical region of nearly 400,000 square miles. At the same time out of the eighteen cocoa-consuming countries of the world the Portuguese are proportionately the smallest consumers of Linnæus’ “Food of the Gods.” Another interesting feature is the growth of the British export from the West African colonies. Within ten years this has multiplied itself something like twelve times over, i.e. in round figures from about 2500 tons in 1902 to over 30,000 tons to-day.

Cocoa grows apparently with greater ease in West Africa than in any other cocoa-producing area in the world. The elaborate systems of manuring which seem imperative in most tropical colonies never enter the head of the West African producer. He piles the fermenting husks in heaps between the rows of trees and then when thoroughly decayed he throws the refuse round the base of the trees.

Insect pests abound, in fact it is seldom one sees a cocoa tree free from the tunnels of the devouring termite, and the bark-boring beetle too makes his presence felt, particularly in the German Cameroons, but in the great cocoa-producing colonies of the Gold Coast and San Thomé, the natives and the Portuguese are profound believers in the principle of “live and let live,” at least in favour of the insect world. The Germans, in all things scientific, have attempted to deal with the pest-ridden area by manuring with superphosphate and potassium chloride, and a largely increased yield is claimed for areas treated in this manner.

In very few plantations that we visited was there any adherence to the wide spacing so strongly advised by expert agriculturists. The British Botanical Gardens of Aburi set an example by laying out experimental plots with cocoa trees fifteen feet apart, but the natives in that colony, and also in Southern Nigeria, ridicule this advice and declare that at such distance they find the rays of the sun are able to penetrate so freely that the ground becomes baked and the roots are robbed of the humidity which is vital to the growth of good cocoa trees. It is noteworthy that on Grenada and other West Indian estates, there is also a tendency to plant more closely than the experts advise. Neither in the Gold Coast nor in Southern Nigeria do many plantations give wider spacing than eight feet apart, and thus many of them crowd from 500 to 700 trees upon a single acre. The plantations in British West Africa being entirely under native control, there are no very reliable statistics upon the annual yield per tree. One official at the Botanical Gardens of Aburi estimated that the natives obtain about 7 lbs. of cocoa per tree per annum; this is a very high average, and I am inclined to think seldom attained, for in Trinidad the annual yield is somewhere about 1 lb. per tree. We visited one large cocoa plantation in Southern Nigeria, where a native had planted 100,000 cocoa trees about one-half of which were already yielding, and from the 50,000 he had obtained within the year 30 tons of cocoa, or an average per tree of a little over 1¼ lbs.

The most important question, that from which the planter is never free, is that of labour. The Germans put the labourers on contracts of twelve months with wages of 8s. to 10s. per month with food, but the conditions of these plantations are not likely to inspire any great enthusiasm amongst humanitarians or economists. The abject fear exhibited by the natives whenever the white man approaches is too eloquent to be mistaken, moreover the whip is carried by the planters as openly as a man in Europe carries a walking-stick. Whips and free contracts seldom go together. Under another section I have dealt with Portuguese labour which in the main is a system of slavery, although it carries with it a paper wage of about 10s. per month and rations.

The native farmers of Southern Nigeria and the Gold Coast employ a good deal of native labour and generally speaking find little difficulty in obtaining all they want. These native farmers, however, prepare their contracts somewhat differently from the European, generally they are for “twelve months of thirty working days,” and the wages vary from 15s. to 20s. per month, whilst a foreman will get 30s. a month. The labourers are free to go at any time, but those who complete their contracts to the satisfaction of the employer are usually given a bonus.

Cocoa growing is probably the least arduous labour in the tropical world of agriculture, as it involves less exposure and at no stage can it be called dangerous as is the case with copra, palm oil and indigenous rubber. The proportion of labourers employed varies according to the colony and circumstances. In the island of Fernando Po, the planters endeavour to employ one man per acre, but the restricted supply of labour seldom permits so ideal a proportion. In the Portuguese island of San Thomé, one labourer is allowed for each hectare under cultivation, but it must require a good deal of “persuasion” to get a native to control an average of at least 2¼ acres of cocoa.

Concurrently with native labour is the question of white supervision which is necessarily costly. On one cocoa plantation of San Thomé, with a total expenditure of £23,000 no less than £3000 is spent upon white control. Upon those Belgian plantations of Mayumbe which are cultivated by free labour, there is barely any white supervision, whilst on the Portuguese islands the proportion of employés works out at about one white man to every thirty natives.

So far as it is possible at the moment to forecast the future of cocoa production in West Africa, the British system alone rests upon a solid basis, for the obvious reason that all other fields are dependent upon systems of labour supply which have little chance of continuance, much less extension. The indigenous industry of the British colonies working in its own interests, unencumbered by the heavy cost of European supervision and the drawbacks of imported contract labour, will, under the guidance of a paternal and sympathetic administration, certainly outdistance and leave far behind in the race for supremacy such systems as those which prevail in San Thomé and Principe.

This virile British enterprise which is bounding forward throughout the Gold Coast and Southern Nigeria has only one real enemy—the concessionnaire hunter. Fortunately, the British Government is fully alive to the danger and is determined, so far as possible, to keep the agricultural land in the hands of the natives. If this can be secured without placing powers in the hands of the Government which would lead to widespread disaffection and unrest amongst the natives, then the cocoa industry of British West Africa promises to eclipse all other cocoa-producing areas of the world.