At the Point of Harvest | A Sentinel Index Briefing | The First Mile | No. 1 | November 2026
The Orchard and the Mine
Where Mining Meets Farmland: Ghana's Mined Land Grew Sixfold in a Decade. Satellites Show It Now Borders the Cocoa.
Between 2015 and 2025, the land given over to mining in Ghana grew from about 15,000 to nearly 98,000 hectares, and the country's cocoa board counts 30,000 hectares of cocoa farms lost to mining, timber felling and sand mining. In one cocoa district, Amansie West, our first satellite pass found three patches of fresh clearing outside any publicly listed license, each one next to land a crop model maps as likely cocoa.
Data cutoff: Nov 2, 2026. Satellite pass: Sentinel-2, Oct 29, 2026, with about 14% of the district seen cloud-free. Satellite figures are HSA estimates, unverified on the ground.
In early 2024, Janet Gyamfi walked what was left of her cocoa farm in Ghana's Western Region. A year earlier, the 27-hectare plot had held nearly 6,000 cocoa trees. When reporters came, fewer than a dozen were still standing. Gold miners had stripped the ground. [1]
Nearly 6,000 trees one year. Fewer than a dozen the next. [1]
"This farm was my only means of survival," Gyamfi, then 52, told them. "I planned to pass it on to my children." [1]
One farm. A pattern.
Her farm is one plot. The national figures say it is not alone.
In February 2025, the chief executive of the Ghana Cocoa Board told a conference of lawmakers that 30,000 hectares of cocoa farms had been destroyed nationwide as of December 2024. He named three causes together: small-scale mining, timber felling and sand mining. Another 50,000 hectares, he said, were at risk. [2]
The same official said cocoa gives direct work to two million Ghanaians and indirect work to five million more. [2]
For a farmer, land under a pit is land that no longer bears a crop.
For a buyer, a traceable bean is only as good as what is known about the land it grew on.
For the food supply, the first mile, where the crop is grown, is where everything after it begins.
Where the cocoa is
Ghana grows its cocoa in the same forest belt where much of its gold lies. The Western and Western North regions together produce more than half of the country's cocoa, the cocoa board told a news agency in July 2026. [3]
A January 2026 research brief from the University of Manchester laid maps of cocoa over maps of mining. Between 1.8% and 16% of the cocoa area it studied lies inside mining sites or mining concessions, depending on which mining map is used. The higher figure counts concessions, which include exploration areas, not only active pits. A further 12.5% to 28% lies within one kilometer. [4]
Inside, or within a kilometer. That is how close.
The numbers
A close look: Amansie West
Amansie West is a cocoa-growing district in Ghana's Ashanti Region. This is where Sentinel Eye, HSA's satellite watch, ran its first worked example.
On Oct 29, 2026, a Sentinel-2 satellite passed over the district. Clouds covered most of it. Only about 14% was clear. [7]
In that clear slice, our screen flagged about 204 hectares of possible change since the same season in 2023 and 2024. Checked against the public license map, 72% of it sits outside any publicly listed license as of Nov 2, 2026. [6][7]
We looked closely at three patches of new bare ground. All three are outside any publicly listed license as of Nov 2, 2026. All three border land that a crop model maps as likely cocoa. [6][7][8]
That is not a finding about legality. On Nov 2, 2026, the public map listed 1,452 active licenses, and about 27% of them had no boundary. [6] A site inside a license can still break the rules.
Likely cocoa land lost is an inference from a model, not a finding. It needs a check on the ground.
What we don't know yet
A watch is only as good as its honesty about what it cannot see.
One cloudy pass covered less than a seventh of the district. We have not scaled the 204 hectares up to the whole district, because that would be a guess. [7]
The satellite flags have not been checked on the ground. The cocoa model has not been checked for accuracy in this district. "Outside" can include sites under licenses with no published boundary. [6][7][8]
We cannot yet say how fast mining is spreading onto farmland. We cannot yet say how many patches there are across the whole district. We cannot yet say how much cocoa output is at stake.
What comes next
Sentinel Eye will run a monthly screen across Ghana's mining belt, district by district, using free satellite images. Each run checks every flagged hectare against the public license map. Patches that matter most will get sharper imagery or a field check before any figure is treated as settled.
Each briefing will show its method and its limits, so anyone can check the work.
The ground under the crop
In two districts of the Western Region, Wassa Amenfi East and West, researchers interviewed 758 cocoa farmers affected by surface mining, using data gathered in 2020. [9]
Their median farm shrank from 10 acres to 5.75 acres after mining arrived. [9]
The study also found that, generally, farmers had given their land to miners willingly, in return for a lump sum. [9]
Janet Gyamfi wanted to hand her farm to her children. [1]
The satellites cannot say who owned the land in Amansie West, or what was agreed for it. They can show where the ground changed, and when, and what the public record says about it.
Next month, the watch passes over again.
Readers can draw their own conclusions.
Sources
All opened and date-checked Nov 2, 2026 unless noted.
- Reuters photo story by Francis Kokoroko, "Chocolate prices to keep rising as West Africa's cocoa crisis deepens," republished by Al Jazeera, Mar 30, 2024 (scene and Janet Gyamfi quote, captions credited to Reuters). https://www.aljazeera.com/gallery/2024/3/30/chocolate-prices-to-keep-rising-as-west-africas-cocoa-crisis-deepens . Reuters original special report: https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/westafrica-cocoa/
- Ghana News Agency, Feb 27, 2025, reporting remarks by the chief executive of the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD); figures as of December 2024.
- Reuters via CNBC Africa, Jul 31, 2026, "Ghana's cocoa production is expected to fall 16% next season." https://www.cnbcafrica.com/2026/ghanas-cocoa-production-is-expected-to-fall-16-next-season
- University of Manchester, Research Brief #5, January 2026. https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/sftresearch/wp-content/uploads/sites/401/2026/05/PolicyBrief_5_V7_Optimized.pdf
- Addo-Fordjour et al., PLOS One, published Sep 3, 2026, peer reviewed. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0357446
- Ghana Minerals Commission public mining repository, synced and downloaded Nov 2, 2026. https://ghana.revenuedev.org/ (boundary count of 1,063 for 1,452 active licenses from HSA's download)
- HSA Sentinel Eye screen, Sentinel-2 pass of Oct 29, 2026, run Nov 2, 2026 (corrected run), and the Sentinel Eye weekly run of Nov 2, 2026 (8,705 of 63,806 ha seen cloud-free, 13.6%; 203.7 ha flagged; 146.7 ha, 72%, outside any publicly listed license as of Nov 2, 2026; 79.2 ha on likely cocoa, model 2026a, 2024 layer, model estimate). Our measurement, unverified on the ground.
- Forest Data Partnership cocoa models, 10 m, 0.5 likely-cocoa cut-off: model 2025b yearly layers 2020–2025 for the patch history (since superseded by 2026a), and model 2026a (2024 layer) for the district total. Unverified model estimates, not accuracy-checked in this district. 2026a: https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/datasets/catalog/projects_forestdatapartnership_assets_cocoa_model_2026a · 2025b (superseded): https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/datasets/catalog/projects_forestdatapartnership_assets_cocoa_model_2025b
- Enu-Kwesi, Dankwah, Ntiri, Koomson and Asmah, "Spillover Effect of Surface Mining on Cocoa Farming in the Wassa Amenfi East and West Districts, Ghana," African Journal of Applied Research, Vol. 9 No. 2 (2023), pp. 255–270; figures on pp. 261–262 (2020 survey data). https://ajaronline.com/index.php/AJAR/article/view/572 · full PDF: https://ajaronline.com/index.php/AJAR/article/download/572/406