Cocoa And Chocolate
The Tree, The Bean The Beverage

138 THE COCOA AND CHOCOLATE INDUSTRY to about 100,000 tons, and it is certainly remarkable that (according to the Confectioners’ Journal) in 1921, Germany consumed 127,000 tons of chocolate, an amount over double its consumption in pre-war days. The United States now consume about one-third of the world’s cacao production. It is said that, when the States “ went dry,” many of the breweries were converted into chocolate factories. This may partly account for America’s amazing appetite for cacao products. To satisfy this appetite, New York imports every year about 2,000,000 bags of cacao. Of these, about half come from the Gold Coast, although in pre-war days Accra cacao was practically unknown in the United States. The consumption of cacao has shown a rapid increase : in 1916 it was 1-6 Ibs. for each person, and in 1920 was 3-2 Ibs. In Great Britain, the consumption was nearly 2 Ibs. for each person in 1915, and had increased to 2-4 Ibs. in 1920, which figure was maintained in 1921 and 1922. There has been a very steady rise in the amount of cacao consumed in Great Britain during the last hundred years, as is well shown by the table in the chapter on history (see p. 26). The home consumption in recent years is given in English tons in the table below, which is taken from the Board of Trade returns—■ CACAO IN THE UNITED KINGDOM Year. Imported. Exporten. Home Consumption. Tons. Tons. Tons. 1920 103,065 43,734 50,651 1921 60,487 28,326 45,865 1922 64,084 18,419 50,530 The total stock of raw cacao in the world (apart from that in the manufacturers’ stores) taken on the last