The most ethical chocolate starts with the bean

On World Chocolate Day, Andrew Baker finds how cacao farms and wildlife co-exist

You have to get up very early in the morning to fool a chimpanzee. More importantly, the next morning you have to get up earlier still. I know this because I recently enjoyed a long conversation with Foday Brima, who farms cacao on the fringes of the Gola rainforest in Sierra Leone, and his colleague Joseph Yambasu.

Brima and Yambasu were in the UK to learn about the consumer end of the chocolate supply chain, and to take part in a round-table discussion on forest-friendly cultivation, hosted by the NGO Twin and the RSPB. From them, I learned a lot about cacao cultivation, agricultural economics and practical sociology. Also: primate management.

The first thing that Brima does every morning is to check that his crop has not been disturbed by animals. That might mean birds, pygmy hippos, tree squirrels… but mainly chimpanzees. “I get to the farm at 8am and bang on an empty drum to scare them away.” The next morning, though, they will come earlier to avoid him, “because they are clever.” So Brima gets there earlier still. Unpredictability is the key.

These measures are necessary because chimpanzees love cacao pods, the soft fruit that surrounds the beans which are the fundamental ingredient of

chocolate. Not only do they love them, but they are very good at harvesting them.

Cacao pods grow straight out of the trunk of the tree, some way off the ground. Chimpanzees jump up and twist them off the tree. “They are almost as good at us at harvesting the cacao,” Brima says. “But they twist to get them off, while we cut. That twisting is bad for the tree, for future crops.”

So to dissuade the chimpanzees, the farmers around the rainforest plant distractions that are both easier for the chimps to get at, and less costly for the farmers to lose. “Bananas and mangoes. They love those.”

This tolerant – even generous – behaviour on the part of the farmers is an example of Forest-Friendly cocoa production, an initiative that the farmers are developing with funding from the ethically active brand Divine Chocolate, and assistance from the non-profit development-through-trade NGO Twin, to ensure not only a decent income from their crops but the preservation and enhancement of

They plant distractions for the chimps that are both easier for them to get at and less costly for the farmers to lose

Foday Brima, right, and members of his farming community, left, on the fringes of the Gola rainforest in Sierra Leone