Today less than a dozen remain, replaced by cyanide-tainted pools of waste water.

Across Ghana cocoa plantations are ceding ground to illegal gold miners, known locally as galamsey.

That's one factor that contributing to catastrophic harvests this year driving up the price of chocolate worldwide.

But for Gyamfi, who has four children to support, there is a more immediate, painful impact.

"We were all surviving on this as livelihood. It's not as if there's another livelihood anywhere that I can rely on, no. I've no source of income anywhere."

Ghana's cocoa marketing board Cocobod has said it has no up-to-date data on the scale of destruction wrought by galamsey.

But its communications director Fiifi Boafo said the impact from the number of farms being destroyed was "enormous".

"It's a combination of factors but, certainly, if you have all these farms being lost, productivity being lost as a result of illegal mining, then its impact on the industry is one we are really struggling to deal with."

Ghana and neighboring Ivory Coast are the undisputed powerhouses of cocoa - accounting for over 60% of global supply.

So when their harvests suffer, prices rise.

Easter shoppers in the U.S. are finding chocolate on store shelves is over 10% more expensive than a year ago, according to data from research firm NielsenIQ.

Chocolate makers tends to hedge cocoa purchases months in advance.

That means, analysts says, the true impact will only really hit consumers later this year.

Farmers, experts and industry insiders also blame the impact of climate change and sector mismanagement.

And there's what many consider an existential threat: swollen shoot.

It's a virus that at first reduces yields, before ultimately killing trees.

If infected, plantations have to be ripped out and the soil treated before cocoa can be replanted.

Cocobod estimates about 1.5 million acres of plantations are now infected with swollen shoot.

That compares with around 3.4 million acres of land under cocoa cultivation, a figure Cocobod said includes infected trees that are still producing cocoa.

Experts say poor harvests in Ghana and Ivory Coast could spell the beginning of the end for West Africa's cocoa supremacy.

Ecuador is forecast to overtake Ghana as the world's number 2 producer by 2027. Brazil and Peru could also step up.

Meanwhile its communities like Gyamfi's that suffer.

She says she had resisted the illegal miners' threatening demands to sell them her plantation.

Then one day she said she arrived to find her land cordoned off, armed guards blocking her path and bulldozers tearing out her trees.

Like others, she has been caught in Ghana's perfect storm of disease and destruction, and had few options but to watch her livelihood be snatched away.