TCHO Team Update, End of Week 2 of Spr Quarter

As everyone finally got settled down and used to the whole new quarantine-lifestyle, our project has been making smooth progress according to our timeline. During the first week, everyone in the team did research around cultural and historical background in Ghana - topics include history of cacao farming in Ghanan, political history of Ghana, and cultural significance of cacao in Ghana. With decent amount of information collecting, reading, and rearranging, we developed a comprehensive report on each of the three topics.

During our weekly meeting, we shared our findings and sparkled new ideas that could lead to future development of the project. Some of our important findings include: 1) Cacao trade is monopolized by the government in Ghana, any trade no matter domestic or international has to go through COCOBOD; 2) Land right shift led to agricultural  policies' change; 3) Cacao growing is labor-intensive, slavery and child-labor are unfortunately part of the play.
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After the educative debrief session, we went on for reflection and finding gaps that needs further investigation. Some express their interests in finding the interplay between the government and the local farmers in the cacao economy,  others saw the potential of using biochar as a cheaper alternative to fertilizers, helping farmers overcome the economic barrier.

Next week we will focus on the location background research in Ghana and move on to the topics that are more related to finding the user demand.