Cacao Research for the Inquisitive

Theobroma cacao



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Tropical regions which provide a warm and humid climate that is ideal for maximum cacao growth. Most of the cacao is grown within a small geographic range is traded globally and is sold as a commodity crop. Countries such as Cameroon, Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana and Nigeria grow approximately seventy-three percent of the cocoa needed for global production. The remaining cocoa is grown in South America and South East Asia (worldcocoafoundation.org).
The three main varieties of cacao grown for chocolate productions are Forastaro, which makes up eighty percent of the commercial cocoa grown. Criollo, mostly grown in Venezuela and Trinitero, which is a hybrid and grown mainly in the Antilles (xocoatl.org). Each variety is known for its unique qualities, but all cacao pods require extremely hard manual labor to harvest, ferment and to make cocoa available for chocolate production.

 

CRIOLLO, TRINITERO and FORASTARO
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History

 

The earliest known origin of cacao is linked to the Pacific coastal plain of Chiapas in the southeast region of Mexico. Early in cocoa’s history, the Aztec people of Mexico, recognized the seeds as currency and traded them for other resources which were not easily available to them .By 600 BC the Maya had started processing cocoa beans into a drink, mixing the ground beans into water. Archaeologists have found many references to the cacao tree on ceramic artifacts, along with art depicting the importance of chocolate in the Mayan and Aztec time periods (History of Chocolate, Coe and Coe, 200). From Mexico the cocoa beans were transported along trade routes to South America with the migration of the Pipil-Nicarado Indians (The Chocolate Tree, Allen Young, 2007).



hungrytraditions

By the mid 1500’s, chocolate was discovered by European travelers. As cultures were combined, so were different ingredients within chocolate processing. The beans were ground using mutates (a stone grinding vessel). The use of “instant chocolate” wafers were adopted from the Aztec as an easy means of transport to other countries. These wafers were made by packing the fine cocoa powder into a small circular disk and placing under the sun until it became dry and hard (Coe and Coe, 2007). The preparation of cocoa also began to change, the bitter chocolate drink was first warmed, sugarcane was added to sweeten it and then other spices were added to alter the flavor of the drink even more. After these transformations took place, chocolate took on a sweeter and more accessible form, making it even more desirable. 

 

As chocolate consumption increased and newly found pleasures turned into obsessions, the global chocolate trade flourished. Chocolate in its many form is currently available to most who desire its decadent qualities. The high demand for chocolate led to an increase in global production which caused strain on the farmers as well as the environment. In countries such as Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, cocoa is grown on small family oriented farms, usually only 6 hectares in size (The Cocoa Industry and Child Labor Schrage and Ewing, 2005 ). There are children as young as twelve working on these farms, harvesting, removing and fermenting the seeds, drying and then packing. Each cacao pod provides approximately forty cocoa beans (Schrage and Ewing, 101), which isn’t many when one pound of chocolate requires ten pods worth of manual labor. Once the harvest is complete, farmers are desperate to sell their cocoa beans. These populations are dependent upon a trade dominated by quality and end product price, a trade that has little regards to the safety of the land or the farmers themselves.

Fair Trade has been a shift into the direction needed for greater social and environmental equality within cacao growing countries. The nonprofit organization Fair Trade was started by president and CEO Paul Rice in 1998. His first office was a warehouse in Oakland CA, here he fought for the rights of underrepresented farmers, greater social capital for communities involved, and to gain U.S. companies participation. Since this first day, the Fair Trade organization has grown to collaborate with over eight hundred U.S. companies and seventy developing countries to sell 1.5 billion dollars of Fair Trade products within 2011. The mission of this program is to:

“Enable sustainable development and community empowerment by cultivating a more equitable global trade model that benefits farmers, workers, consumers, industry and the earth” (fairtradeusa.org).

Within Côte d’Ivoire there are twelve cooperatives, containing over seventeen thousand farmers. There have been many community improvement initiatives which have built schools and hospitals and provided farmers with cultivation techniques and methods to keep their cacao trees healthy (fairtradeusa.org).