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Ecological Cacao? Thinking about all sides of your chocolate barAlex Gehrig, special to mongabay.comApril 01, 2009
Theobroma cacao is first and foremost a tree. Specifically it is a tropical tree that grows naturally in the sub-canopy or understory of tropical wet forests, lending it the ability to be part of diverse agricultural systems. Though cacao is now also grown commercially in Africa and East Asia, its origins are in Central and South America where indigenous cultures made use of it as a drink and bartering tool centuries before the Spanish “discovered” it during the conquests of the 14th century. The chocolate we eat is processed from the seeds of the cacao tree. They grow within a pod that can contain as many as fifty seeds about the size of an almond. The pod starts as a small flower no bigger than the first joint on your index finger and is pollinated by some of the smallest gnats and flies in the local environment, once pollinated it will take between three and five months to fully develop. Harvesting seeds that are either not completely developed or over-mature results in a bean that lacks the right chemical properties to produce the famous rich fragrance and flavor of fine chocolate.
Harvest is done completely by hand. First the mature pods are removed from the trees and piled throughout the farm. Once this tumba is complete the seeds are harvested pile by pile using a small sharp machete to make two to three cuts in the pod that can be up to an inch thick and tough to open. Cuts to the hand are common and any large group of cacao farmers will almost always have one or two individuals with fingers partially missing. Harvested beans are collected and carried to a more central location where they are deposited into large sacks. The seeds are coated with a thick sweet and sour white pulp that can be good to savor while working. Apart from this, the natural sugars in the pulp play a vital role in producing chocolate’s popular flavor. Farmers will often form a pile of freshly harvested beans on banana leaves or in a wood box allowing the sugars in the pulp to provide nutrients for the naturally occurring micro-organisms that are responsible for the fermenting process. During fermentation the seeds undergo changes that alter their chemical nature. Without fermentation, the end product would be extremely bitter and would have very little of the flavor of chocolate that we are so familiar with.
Much of the cacao produced in the world comes from growers who typically have farms that are smaller than 10 hectares and are often as small as 2 or 3. These small producers frequently do not have direct access to markets and potential buyers in the U.S, Europe and Asia. They depend on local intermediaries who purchase in volume and who in turn sell to larger local export corporations that deal with brokers in importing countries. The fully fermented and dried chocolate beans are then purchased through different types of agreements by chocolate companies. It can be difficult for families who depend on cacao to earn a livable income given such a large chain of sale that often pays little to the people that grow the crop. This in turn can lead farmers to convert from traditional forms of cacao cultivation that often include a diverse array of marketable wood and fruit trees to more immediately profitable and higher yielding full sun varieties that may also require higher chemical inputs. Within the area that I lived, well over half of the producers had converted from the highly prized but lower yielding nacional variety to a more recently created high-yield hybrid. More often than not this meant the complete clearing of old plantations including ecologically desirable secondary timber growth as farmers attempted to put all of their focus on income from cacao.
There has been an increasing awareness in developed nations of the impact of consumption on tropical eco-systems that has lead to a surge in the labeling and marketing of products as organic, fair trade and shade grown. However, there remains a debate as to the best way to make these practices most effective in conservation while providing growers with the opportunity to improve their lives. In a recent article for Biodiversity Conservation, Margaret Franzen and Monique Borgerhoff Mulder highlight some of the difficulties in determining the positive effects of shade grown cacao and the challenges of creating policies that help both conservation efforts and the farmers that are a critical part of those efforts. It is difficult to define good policies in part because biodiversity conservation and poverty alleviation can be inversely related as gains in yield that help increase farmer incomes can often entail less shade and more chemicals. The authors also highlight the importance of knowing what the alternative uses of cacao farmland might be and to understand its proximity to ecologically important areas such as parks or potential habitat corridors. They suggest that promoting diverse farms as a better investment in the long-term should be a focus of conservation efforts and would promote stability for farmers and ecological benefits for natural areas. While sound advice, this can be much easier said than done as social and economic instability often create environments (as was the case in Ecuador) in which farmers have little incentive to think in the long term.
Citation: Margaret Franzen and Monique Borgerhoff Mulder (2007) Ecological, Economic and Social Perspectives on Cocoa Production Worldwide. Biodivers Conserv 16:3835–3849
Tags: Alex Gehrig agroforestry agriculture farming biodiversity forests pollution Environmental news index | RSS | News Feed | Twitter | Home Advertisements:
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