COCOA CULTIVATION
Most of the world’s cocoa is grown by smallholder farmers in remote equatorial regions who face economic, social and environmental challenges: poverty, aging cocoa trees, soil degradation, and lack of essential infrastructure such as clean water, electricity, paved roads, or high quality education. Human rights violations with high prevelance of child labor and gender imbalance also affects the sustainability of cocoa farming communities, with women having limited opportunities to build skills and generate income.
Climate change adds further pressure with rising temperatures, rain variability, extreme weather events, and pest and disease outbreaks - threatening cocoa supply and farmer livelihoods.
In the future the risks to cocoa will likely intensify, farmers we directly work with will increasingly face erratic weather, aging trees, declining yields, disease outbreaks and limited access to solutions to improve productivity and resilience.
This highlights the urgent need for rejuvenation and investment to ensure a resilient and sustainable cocoa supply chain. It is a journey that requires the collective effort of customers, partners, and everyone committed to our mission.
CACAO TREE - THEOBROMA CACAO
The word ‘Theobroma’ comes from ancient Greek and translates as ‘food of the Gods’.
Theobroma cacao, is a tropical tree that thrives in the equatorial region from Central and South America to Africa and Indonesia. The cocoa tree can grow as tall as 12-15 m in the wild, but to facilitate harvesting most cocoa farmers do not let it grow higher than 4-8 m. The cocoa flowers bloom all year and they grow directly on the trunk and main branches of the cacao tree. Over the year, thousands of small flowers blossom, but only a small percent will develop into fruit. Each flower blooms for only a single day and cocoa pods take about five months to develop.
The cacao pod – also known as the cacaofruit – ripen into a variety of colors - including red, yellow and purple- shapes and sizes (15-35 cm in lenght). Each pod contains around 40 cacao beans, between 1-3 cm long, enclosed by sweet pulp.
Forastero
The most commonly grown, accounts for around 80% of the world's supply.
Criollo
The rare - produces the highest quality beans, only 5% of the world's production.
Trinitario
The cross between the other two varieties, combining robustness and flavor, around 15%.
GLOBAL COCOA PRODUCTION
The biggest producing region is West-Africa - Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana accounting for 50-60% of the world production - followed by Latin America and Asia.