Archive for the ‘Cocoa Farming’ Category

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Kids of Cocoa Farmers

Friday, October 8th, 2010

Ever imagine how your life would have turned out if you were born unto different circumstances? What if you grew in up Africa? What if your father was a 3rd world cocoa farmer?

Britian’s Pa Pa Paa Live! transforms the ‘what if’ into a ‘see it for yourself.’

Pa Pa Paa LIVE! brings the lives of cocoa farmers’ kids directly into your classroom through regular webcasts.

Pa Pa Paa LIVE! is an online video broadcasting service for schools, delivering webcasts from a rural school in a cocoa growing community in Ghana to classrooms across the UK…

The aim of Pa Pa Paa LIVE! is to increase young people’s understanding of Fairtrade and the actions they can take as consumers and global citizens to make the world a better place.

Pa Pa Paa LIVE! is brought to you by Comic Relief and Trading Visions. The Pa Pa Paa resources were first launched in 2000 and updated for the web in 2005.

The webcasts are available through a collaborative effort from:

Comic Relief: a UK-based charity set up in 1985 by comedians who wanted to use comedy to raise money and change lives around the world. Comic Relief now has two major fundraising campaigns; Red Nose Day and Sport Relief.

Trading Visions: a charity that drives Fairtrade education and action by amplifying the voices of small-scale cocoa farmers in the supply chain, so they themselves can challenge and change consumer behaviour and industry practice. Trading Visions has a track record in using innovative new technologies to bring producers and consumers face to face in fun and accessible educational experiences.

Kuapa Kokoo: a co-operative of more than 45,000 cocoa farmers in Ghana, working to improve lives of its members by ensuring reliable and prompt payment, providing training, a credit loan scheme, and access to market information, as well as funding community projects through the ‘Fairtrade premium’ generated from Fairtrade. They are co-owners of Divine Chocolate Ltd.

Divine Chocolate: the UK’s leading Fairtrade chocolate company, part-owned by Kuapa Kokoo which supplies the beans for Divine chocolate and Dubble chocolate (the children’s bar with added Comic Relief).

Posted in Africa, Cocoa Farming, Fairtrade, Ghana | 1 Comment »

Money Grows on Trees

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

“Yes, money grows on trees.” So says Choco Guate Maya, a nonprofit NGO in Guatemala objective is to raise awareness about the Mayan origin of Theobroma Cacao.

Whether consumed as an esteemed drink or exchanged as money, cacao (Theobroma cacao) was one of the most important plant products of ancient Mesoamerica. The seeds derived from the pod of the cacao tree were widely used as currency and John Lloyd Stephens reported the use of cacao as currency as late as the mid-19th c. in Yucatan. When ground into powder, the seeds were mixed with water and flavoring agents to create a frothy beverage greatly favored by the native elite. Recent epigraphic research has established that the word cacao was fully presented among the Classic Maya; in fact, many of the fine Classic Maya polychrome vases are glyphically labeled as cacao drinking vessels. (An Ilustrated Dictionary of The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya by Mary Miller and Karl Taube)

The purpose of this NGO is three-fold:

  1. Bring awareness of the evidence indicating that the use of cacao (Theobroma Cacao Criollo)) originated in Central America, more precisely in the Mayan areas of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras and Mexico.
  2. To encourage the small subsistence farmers to create co-operatives, and to oversee that the cacao stays organic for it to be desirable as a specialty item in the international market.
  3. Ultimately, assist in ensuring that the co-operatives receive fair trade prices for their cacao, based on US European markets.

    4. We seek to help cacao farmers in Guatemala by organizing co-operatives to produce organic cacao for an export market. The proposed solution has many layers including agricultural education. We plan to establish two different pilot projects in cacao growing areas in Guatemala.

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Posted in Cocoa Farming, Guatemala | 79 Comments »

Cacao Farming Saves Diminishing Rainforest

Friday, February 12th, 2010

Growing cacao means saving a depleting Rainforest in Brazil. In a 2007 NPR report Joanne Silberner illustrates How Chocolate Can Save the Planet through a farming method called cabruca. Farmers cut a small number of tall Rainforest trees, then plant mid-height cacao trees underneath. This helps prevent the rampant slash and burn techniques that have caused the loss of more than 90 percent of the native Mata Atlantica Rainforest.

There’s a lot less rainforest than there once was. There used to be 330 million acres of rainforest in eastern Brazil, called the Mata Atlantica. Settlers arrived hundreds of years ago and began destroying the forest for the wood, and to create fields for pasture and crops. Only 7 percent of the Mata Atlantica remains, and destruction is still going on. Every time a tree is burned, its stored carbon is released. As more carbon is released into the air, the planet gets warmer…

Everywhere you look, something is growing. Orchids nestle in the crooks of trees. There are hundreds of shades of green, and the forest is loud with birds and insects.

Some areas have been thinned out and planted with cacao trees — the source of chocolate. The pods contain the magical beans that Aztecs counted like gold. The cultivated cacao trees grow just a bit higher than a man can reach, and rainforest trees tower over them like something out of Dr. Seuss — some round like lollipops, some flat like a plate.

And here’s the climate connection. Rainforest trees and plants store massive amounts of carbon — keeping it from getting into the air as carbon dioxide.

That worries Dario Ahnert, a plant expert at the State University of Santa Cruz in Eastern Brazil. He says farmers need an incentive to save the remaining forest, and he hopes chocolate will be that incentive.

Chocolate used to be a huge industry here, but in the past two decades, plant disease and low prices in the world market for cocoa beans devastated the industry. Farmers turned to other ways of making a living, including logging trees or burning the forest for farmland or pasture. When the nutrients in the soil were used up, the land was abandoned.

Ahnert wants to persuade farmers to return to chocolate farming and preserve the forest. His friend, Joao Tavares, shows it can be done.

Cabruca Farming

Joao Tavares is a fourth-generation cocoa producer. Tavares, along with his brother and father, has 2,200 acres of rainforest planted with cacao trees. They grow cocoa using a method called cabruca — cutting down just a few of the tall rainforest trees, and planting the mid-height cacao trees underneath.

Inside Tavares’ cabruca forest, the ground is covered in a thick layer of composting leaves. It’s moist, shady and cool here in the cabruca. Football-shaped pods — striped in yellow and green and orange and brown — jut out from the trunks and branches of the cacao trees…

Read the entire article or listen to the broadcast of the story by clicking here.

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Posted in Brazil, Cocoa Farming | 3 Comments »

Mom Mouths Off at Child Slave Practices of Chocolate Giants

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

Convinced that moms can change the world, this wife-mother-advocate takes a bold stance against corporate chocolate makers who use child slave labor to produce their chocolate confections. Courtney wants the rest of the world to take action too:

Here’s a little history: There are roughly 280,000 children working on cocoa farms in west Africa, with about 200,000 of those working in The Ivory Coast. A substantial number of those children have been trafficked from other African countries. The work these children perform is categorized as “dangerous” and they are forced to work long hours while being denied an education. The cocoa industry became aware of this issue about 10 years ago and even ratified an agreement in 2001 promising to end the worst forms of child labor by 2005. They did not deliver on this promise, and were given an extension to follow through in 50% of the cocoa regions by 2008. Instead they altered the wording of the agreement to say they simply had to REPORT the problem…not actually do anything about it. (You can learn more about this issue at www.stopthetraffik.com or check out their Where Does Our Chocolate Come From Fact Sheet or FAQs.)

As a little note of hope…things are slowly changing. Due to advocacy work by the amazing organization Stop The Traffik, Cadbury has recently launched a line of fair trade certified chocolate in the UK and Ireland and Mars has recently promised to make their Galaxy bars certified fair trade by the end of this year. They have also promised to make the rest of their chocolate products fair trade by 2020. (You can read more about these changes in Stop The Traffik’s News Section)

Nestle is the only major US chocolate company refusing to make any real changes in this area. They have recently promised (kind of randomly) to make their 4 piece Kit Kat bars fair trade, but none of their other products (including the 2 piece Kit Kats) will be. This seems to imply that they have only made this change so that they can say they offer fair trade chocolate. But Nestle has clearly missed the point. So we’re going to target them. I’ve decided that simply boycotting their slave tainted products is not enough…that we need to actually advocate for the rights enslaved children who live a horrific life simply because it increases Nestle’s profit margin.

View the five easy yet direct ways consumers can show Nestle that ending child slavery on cacao farms is important to them by clicking here.

You can also read an ealier post Courtney wrote tackling this very same issue by clicking here.

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Posted in Africa, Cadbury, Child Slavery, Cocoa Farming, Fairtrade, Hershey, Ivory Coast, Mars, Nestle | 33 Comments »

Peru Farmers Ditch Coca for Cacao

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010

Farmers in Peru are rethinking their industries. Time reports that many farmers in Tocache are starting to see more value in chocolate than in cocaine:

The certificate was only one of several that emerged from the prestigious Salon du Chocolat in Paris, the annual summit of the world’s master chocolatiers. But it may be enough to start a revolution in Peru. In October 2009, chocolate produced from the cacao beans of a small agricultural cooperative deep in one of the country’s rain forests was named the most aromatic in the world by the Salon. “We used to be known for making cocaine paste, but now we are known for chocolate,” says Elena Rios, 52, secretary of the Tocache Agroindustrial Cooperative. Rios herself gave up growing coca leaves 10 years ago, opting to take part in a program to replace her plants with cacao. “There were only 12 of us when we started; now we have hundreds. Our success is contagious. No one wants to grow coca in Tocache. Everyone is thinking about chocolate.”

Read the entire article by clicking here.

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Posted in Cocoa Farming, Peru, Production | 63 Comments »

First-Ever Hawaii Cacao Festival

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Hawaii aims to make a name for itself in chocolate with its first-ever cacao festival. From the Star Bulletin:

Attention, chocoholics! The first-ever Hawaii Cacao Festival is set to take place this Sunday in Haleiwa.

Besides samplings of chef creations, there will be a recipe contest, keiki activities, and tours of the Waialua Estate Cacao farm on the North Shore to learn firsthand how chocolate is grown and harvested.

Why cacao?

Because it’s one of Hawaii’s emerging agricultural industries, according to Pamela Boyar, who launched the Haleiwa Farmers Market with Annie Suite last April.

As Oahu’s first green-inspired market, shoppers are encouraged to recycle and bring their own bags while buying local. The market also celebrates seasonal crops and aims to encourage more agri-tourism in the isles.

According to Boyar, the Hawaii Cacao Festival is the first of more special events to come.

Read the entire article by clicking here.

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Posted in Cocoa Farming, Hawaii, Production | No Comments »

Nestle Pledges Millions of Cacao Trees to Ivory Coast

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Soaring cacao prices affect everyone, even the big chocolate manufacturers. But Bloomberg.com reports that Nestle has stepped up to help ease the cacao shortage in the Ivory Coast by pledging to give the African nation millions of trees.

Nestle SA, the maker of Kit Kat, Butterfinger and Crunch chocolates, will provide 12 million cocoa trees during the next decade to farmers in Ivory Coast, the world’s largest grower, to help improve bean quality.

“What we are trying is to increase the quality of the cocoa trees of our producers,” Klaus Zimmermann, the head of product technology and R&D Centers for Nestle, said today during an interview in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Vevey, Switzerland-based Nestle will receive a small fee from farmers for the trees.

Cocoa prices in New York have more than doubled since 2006, touching a 30-year high in December, as slumping output in Ivory Coast left a global production deficit for three straight years. Farmers in major growing regions say beans are becoming scarcer amid unusually dry weather in the past two months, raising concern that supplies will fall short of forecasts.

Read the entire article by clicking here.

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Posted in Africa, Cocoa Farming, Ivory Coast, Nestle, Production | No Comments »

Growing Cacao

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010


Excellent info on growing cacao on your own from You Grow Girl:

Cacao (Theobroma cacao) is the tree that chocolate comes from. The fruit is a big pod that forms directly on the trunk and older growth of the tree. It kind of looks like a squash and smells like one too.

Chocolate is made by fermenting, sun drying, and sometimes slow roasting the little beans that form inside the pod. However, a sweet, white, and sticky flesh grows around the beans that can be eaten fresh out of the pod. Eating that fresh flesh was on my list of things to do before I die; however, my first attempt was thwarted by an over-ripe pod that was neither sweet nor sticky and kind of tasted like a giant eraser for BIG mistakes.

Click here to read more and view a video.

Posted in Cocoa Farming | No Comments »

Cacao Basics

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

Information Hub has collected summary info about cacao:

The West African nation of Ivory Coast alone producing about 1.4 million tones of beans per year. Ghana is the world’s second largest producer with more than 600,000 tons per year. Other top cacao-growing countries include Indonesia, Brazil, Ecuador, Togo, Mexico and Papua New Guinea. Cocoa beans are also grown in other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, but their share is smaller.

Chocolate’s flavor depends mainly on the kind of cacao beans used to make it. Cocoa beans vary widely from country to country and sometimes even from farm to farm. Read more about the different kinds of beans grown throughout the world and the factors affecting their taste:

Bulk Beans vs. Flavor Beans: the workhorses and the Thoroughbred

Types of Trees: Forastero, Criollo and Trinitario

Blend Beans: A mix for the perfect taste

Ecuador: Flavor Capitol

Factors affecting taste: The Origins of Flavor

Find more info about cacao by clicking here.

Posted in Cocoa Farming | No Comments »

The Genetics of Chocolate

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

An article from the Miami Herald looks at what scientists are digging up about chocolate:

CacaoNo one who loves chocolate needs to be told that it is experiencing a golden age. The very fact that the names of illustrious cacao types like Venezuelan Porcelana have made their way onto chocolate-bar labels shows a deepening hunger for vivid cacao character and careful artisanship.

On the scientific front, biochemists are unraveling chocolate’s heart-healthfulness and archaeologists are gaining insight into its ancient ritual uses, but plant geneticists are engaged in the most exciting research. Their project to decode the cacao genome holds promise for farmers, manufacturers and chocolate lovers alike.

View the entire article by clicking here.

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Posted in Cocoa Farming, Health, Production | No Comments »

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