<P> The crop is grown in Ivory Coast mostly by smallholder farmers planting on 1 - 3 hectares . The pods containing the beans are harvested when a sufficient number are ripe, opened to separate the seeds and pulp from the outer rind, and the seeds and pulp are usually allowed to ferment somewhere on the farm, before the seeds are dried in a central location . The dried seeds are purchased by a traitant or buyer who travels among villages in an area to weigh, purchase and collect the crop . The traitant then takes the crop to a short - holding warehouse in a major town or city where the major exporters purchase the seeds and arrange for its export from Ivory Coast . The entire process requires the labored contribution of a variety of workers, from the farmer who owns the fields, to his laborers who may be family members (in most cases), to others in the village who harvest pods to ferment seeds at the same time, to the local buyers, and the middlemen between these purchasers and the exporters who finally get the crop to an export ship . </P> <P> Ivory Coast and other West African cocoa producing nations have come under severe criticism in the west for using child slave labor to produce the cocoa purchased by Western chocolate companies . The bulk of the criticism has been directed towards practices in Ivory Coast . The report "A Taste of Slavery: How Your Chocolate May be Tainted" claims that traffickers promise paid work, housing, and education to children who are then forced to labour and undergo severe abuse, that some children are held forcibly on farms and work up to 100 hours per week, and that attempted escapees are beaten . A BBC article claimed that 15,000 children from Mali, some under age 11, were working as slaves in cocoa production in Ivory Coast, and Mali's Save the Children Fund director described "young children carrying 6 kg of cocoa sacks so heavy that they have wounds all over their shoulders ." In 2001 Chocolate Manufacturers Association acknowledged that slaves harvested some cocoa . In 2013, the U.S. DOL's report Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor in Côte d'Ivoire stated that 39.8% of children aged 5 to 14 are working children and that they "are engaged in the worst forms of child labor in agriculture, particularly on cocoa farms, sometimes under conditions of forced labor ." In December 2014, the DOL's List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor mentioned Ivory Coast among the countries where instances of such working conditions (both child labor and forced labor) are still observed . </P> <Ul> <Li> Cacao swollen shoot virus </Li> <Li> Phytophthora megakarya </Li> </Ul> <Li> Cacao swollen shoot virus </Li>

Which country is the largest producer of chocolate