Despite the risks from deadly armed groups roaming the countryside, Judith Kahindo walks alone every day to her isolated cocoa plantation in the war-torn North Kivu region of the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

North Kivu is primarily rich in coltan and other minerals that have fuelled the fighting that has ravaged the region for the last three decades.

Vast areas have been seized by the M23 rebel group in a lightning offensive since January including the capital Goma.

But further north in Beni, cocoa, whose prices have soared on the world market in the last two years, also stokes the violence.

Massacres committed by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) rebels, who have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, have left thousands dead and prevented cocoa farmers from accessing their plantations for years.

"We tend our fields with the fear of being massacred because cocoa is so coveted, whether by the rebels or even our soldiers," said Kahindo, a widow with eight children, as she hacked her way through a tangled forest with a machete.

Cocoa production across........

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