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Cacao Story
On Monday (May 7th) of this week I was in Hastings at a
celebration called 'Jack in the Green'. A large leaf-covered
man paraded through the streets, accompanied by hundreds
of dancers and drummers dressed in leafy green garb, or
as giants, foxes, deer and badgers. Our house, which was
on the procession route, was decked in ivy and other leaves,
as were most of the houses on the street. Everything was
garlanded with ribbons, mostly yellow, green and white,
echoing the colours of early leaf and blossom. On Sunday
the local 14th C Church, much to the disgust of some of
its more sanctimonious members, had even allowed the dancers
into its sacred precinct, where they played and sang and
danced. This ancient celebration is rooted in the old pagan
festival of Beltane and acknowledges the idea that there
is a 'green spirit' which was long ago anthropomorphised
into the "Green Man." There is a stone carving
of the Green Man's leaf-clad face carved into the stonework
of the Church, reflecting a time when the Church was more
accomodating of what are still seen by purists as heretical
views. Jack in the Green has survived tenaciously and now
the celebration grows in numbers every year and seems doomed
to become a tourist attraction.
When we look at cacao, we see a tree that embodies the spirit
of the forest and acts as a link between the canopy, the
middle storey and the ground level. Cacao plays an important
role in the rain forest where it grows, a role which extends
into its products, which are pivotal to human trade and
society and which have led to its propagation around the
world wherever growing conditions are suitable. As an unreconstructed
Lamarckian, even a Lysenkoite, I intuitively believe that
an organism can consciously evolve and that the discoveries
of Crick and Watson and the Human Genome Project actually
confirm the Lamarckian idea that acquired characteristics
can be transmitted to future generations. This contradicts
the Darwinian thesis that evolution is just a series of
mass extinctions punctuated by lucky genetic accidents.
I am intrigued by the conspiracy theory that humans are
not the masters of the planet, but merely the mandarins
or administrative class who run things for the cows, who
reward us with their highly addictive milk and meat. In
exchange for their products, we manage the surface of the
planet to accommodate their needs, clearing forests and
creating artificial pastureland in areas where forest would
otherwise prevail. While cattle exist in smaller numbers
than humans, their combined weight exceeds that of all humanity
and the land area they occupy is greater than for any other
land life form. Certainly the close cohabitation with cattle
that prevailed until recently in the southern Jutland peninsula,
home of the Holstein and Friesian breeds, as well as the
myth of Europa, reflects an earlier belief in the mystic
power of these life-giving and life-saving, beasts. If there
is a candidate for a vegetable counterpart to the cow, I
submit that it must be cacao. Its character, its cultivation
and its natural history suggest that it is worthy of the
deification that it received from the Maya and other Central
American civilisations.
Every plant, as it follows and reveals the universal principles
that animate all living systems, can tell us much about
ourselves.
Nicholas Culpeper, the pioneering 17th Century English herbalist,
wrote in his introduction to The Complete Herbal:
"God has stamped his image on every creature, and therefore
the abuse of the creature is a great sin; but how much more
do the wisdom and excellency of God appear, if we consider
the harmony of the Creation in the virtue and operation
of every Herb? "
So, what is it about cacao that makes it such a special
food?
Theobroma Cacao grows wild in Central America in the Maya
Mountains of southern Belize. Cacao is a unique tree with
a unique way of capturing nutrients, protecting itself and
reproducing in a harsh environment and rearing its offspring
in a caring and nurturing way. In the process it produces
substances that have a profound attraction to humans.
In the wild the cacao tree grows to a height of 10-20 metres,
which for other trees in the rain forest would mean an inability
to survive. Typically, the mahogany tree, which occupies
the canopy of the forest, drops its crop of seeds to earth
where they will germinate and grow to a few centimetres
fed by the nutrients in the seed and then enter a sort of
stasis. It takes an event such as a hurricane or logging
or the collapse of an aged or diseased tree to allow in
enough sunlight for the mahogany to seize its chance and
make a bid for the top.
To flourish in the middle storey of the rain forest requires
a very different strategy. The cacao tree still needs some
sunlight, it just gets by with a lot less than most plants
need to survive, by exhibiting a frugality and intelligence
of function that enables it to live and reproduce in extremely
deprived conditions. It tends to do best on hillsides, where
glancing light increases the otherwise sparse availability
of sunshine. Hence its success in the Maya Mountains, where
south-facing mountain slopes allow light to cut through
the canopy at an angle. In the wild it is often found in
stands, where it has managed to colonise an area. The cacao
tree flowers on its main trunk and leading branches. The
flowers are pollinated by midges which breed on the rotting
debris of the forest floor. The pollinated flower forms
a pod which grows on a callus-like pad directly off the
trunk or branch. The pod is as hard as wood. Each pod contains
30 or so seeds surrounded by a sweet juicy milky pulp. As
the pod ripens the seeds begin to germinate, still in the
pod. When the shoots and roots are a few millimetres long
the pod falls to earth and rolls away from the parent tree.
The pod still forms a helmet-like protective barrier over
the seedlings. The clustered seeds all send down roots and
send up shoots together, closely packed on the jungle floor.
Eventually the shoots raise the pod up and it falls over
and off, but by then the seedlings are off to a good start.
If they are all successful then they gradually merge into
one tree. In this respect the cacao tree has evolved in
a way that is rare in nature:
1. Like a marsupial, the offspring is retained by the parent
and not released into the world to fend for itself until
it has developed beyond a certain point. The mother tree
feeds its children until they have developed sufficiently
to survive in the wild
2. Even with developed shoots and roots, the plantlets still
stick closely together and sacrifice their individuality
in the interests of common survival in a hostile environment.
In domesticating cacao the Maya made few changes to the
wild tree. As the matriarchal horticulturalists who created
many of the world's most commercially important and sensual
plants including maize, amaranth, pumpkins, kidney beans,
papaya, guava, chilli peppers, vanilla, tobacco and dahlias,
it is perhaps not surprising that they could effect precise
changes in developing the 'criollo' cacao tree. ('criollo'
means 'native' in Spanish). The criollo tree differs from
the wild cacao in three main ways:
1 The pod is softer and easier to open with a stone or a
knife
2 The tree grows to a limited height, reduced from 10-20
metres to 3-5 metres, making pruning and harvesting easier.
3 The seeds, which are creamy coloured in wild cacao, are
purple in colour in the criollo variety. This reflects a
greatly increased content of alkaloids and other compounds.
It was women who domesticated cacao and created maize. With
sacraments including morning glory seeds, they developed
a deep rapport and understanding with plants, persuading
them to evolve in ways that are beyond the ability of modern
plant breeders and molecular biologists to comprehend.
The Maya cultivated cacao in forest gardens in which every
tree had a function. As a result, the trees that provided
shade for the cacao also provided thatching and building
material, fodder, oilseeds, wood, medicines, fruit and allspice.
Careful management of the shade ensures that the cultivated
cacao doesn't grow too quickly and thrives in a healthy
and controlled environment that closely replicates the natural
wild environment of the cacao tree.
(An example of how successfully the Maya domesticated the
cacao without depriving it of its intrinsic ability to live
sustainably in the wild happened two years ago. One of the
members of the cooperative of Maya Indians who supply us
with cacao led an archaeological expedition to ruins in
a remote region of Belize that has not been inhabited since
the collapse of the Maya civilisation in the 9th Century.
In the surrounding forest he found a stand of several hundred
domesticated cacao trees that have reproduced without human
support on that spot for over a millennium).
Nowadays cacao plantations are laid out on three basic patterns.
1. The oldest are in Belize and were planted on the 'whole
pod' basis The farmer would simply prepare a space in the
forest and then plant a germinating mature pod. Once the
tree had emerged he would allow all the branches to grow
and then, as some revealed themselves as more productive
than others, would prune selectively to maximise yield.
Yields are about 400 Kgs per hectare, combined with other
forest products.
2. The typical plantation-based mode of most of the last
century was to plant the cacao in rows that were 5 metres
apart, growing the trees from seed. This leaves sufficient
space between the trees to allow for tall shade trees, which
are then managed to provide the appropriate level of light.
Yields are about 500 Kgs per hectare, but considerable other
economic benefits accrue, particularly to those farmers
who also plant mahogany and red cedar as shade trees. Over
a 25 year period the income from wood can greatly exceed
that from cacao and increase with each further year. Unfortunately,
because of forest protection laws and land tenure uncertainties
in many areas, smallholders often do not plant high value
trees in case they are confiscated by the national government.
3. The most modern and intensive method represents the system
imposed by American, British, Dutch, German and Swiss 'aid'
organisations in the 1980s. This massive aid programme successfully
created global overcapacity in cacao and was in response
to the upswing in cacao prices caused by the President of
the Ivory Coast's decision to hold back supplies from the
market in 1982. The trees are closely planted at 2.5 metres
apart. The only shade comes from small and economically
valueless shrubs and also from the top part of the cacao
tree itself. Fertility comes from regular applications of
nitrogen fertiliser. Yields are around 800Kgs per hectare,
double the least intensive system. But, there is no other
income from the land used. Disease is rampant and requires
constant control. The fungal diseases Witches' broom and
black pod, are common and devastating and becoming more
virulent. This method represents a step too far in intensification.
There are large areas of Brazil where cocoa production has
collapsed completely due to ineradicable disease that has
wiped out the entire base of cacao trees.
A conference was held in Costa Rica1998 at which the leading
chocolate companies met to seek solutions to the crash in
cacao production. The conference concluded that a return
to less intensive practices was the key to sustainable production.
However, the legacy of the 1980s aid programme will haunt
the industry for decades.
In the first two systems, fertility is almost entirely 'passive'
and this has attracted criticism from organic certification
organisations which are wedded to the idea that good organic
agriculture requires the production and use of animal manure
and vegetable composts to encourage growth.
However, excessive growth, due to fertiliser and sunshine,
leads inexorably to fungal disease in the cacao tree.
In a well managed plantation following the first two systems
the fertility sources are manifold, but fertility is delivered
over a longer time frame. The shade trees draw mineral nutrients
from deep below the forest floor and transform them into
leaves. When the leaves fall these nutrients are made available
to the cacao tree, which has a shorter taproot combined
with a mat-like network of surface-feeding roots. If you
scrape back the leaf litter on the forest floor you immediately
come upon the cacao roots, some of which are pointed upward,
clinging to and eating into the decomposing leaves without
waiting for them to break down into humus. Canopy-dwelling
birds and mammals regularly deposit small amounts of guano
and manure which splashes on the leaves of the cacao trees
and then is washed down to the soil by rain. Because it
is drip-fed to the cacao tree in continuous small quantities
it does not encourage the soft sappy growth that is prone
to fungal and insect attack.
Perhaps because it is slow-growing and accessible, the cacao
tree exudes caffeic acid from its leaves. It is common among
the Maya to snap off a leaf of cacao and chew it to a pulp,
extracting a mildly stimulating dose of caffeine. In the
beans in the pod, caffeic acid becomes the alkaloids theobromine
(food of the gods)and theophylline (leaf of the gods), both
methylxanthines in the same group of alkaloids as caffeine,
which is a breakdown product of their consumption. The levels
of theobromine in cacao are highly toxic and are targeted
at birds and mammals. For a squirrel or a monkey one or
two cacao beans are enough to bring on heart palpitations
and a speedy retreat to the treetops, reinforcing the memory
that this is a food not to be toyed with. Other predators
on cacao don't eat the cacao, but use it to farm other food
products.
Woodpeckers will make a hole in the cacao pod. This is done
in order to attract flying insects that lay their eggs in
the sweet inner pulp surrounding the seeds. The woodpecker
then returns at regular intervals to eat the larvae. Leafcutter
ants march across the forest floor carrying small sail-shaped
pieces cut from leaves of cacao. They do not eat them however,
but take them below ground where they provide food for a
fungal culture. It is the fungus that the ants then consume.
The Maya believed in a sort of coevolution with animals,
plants, soil and water. Their belief was that the quest
for perfection that characterises humankind cannot be achieved
without the collaboration of perfected plants and animals.
The frog and the jaguar, the morning glory and the cacao
tree all played significant roles in this evolutionary process
and were accorded a value not solely based on what they
could give to humanity, but also, like household pets, loved
for themselves and treated with the same care that one would
give to a family member.
Cocoa beans were also used as money during this era, one
of the few instances of money truly growing on trees. The
Maya trading economy used cacao as capital, in much the
same way as cattle were used in Europe.
In Mexico, hot chocolate is never served at funerals but
everyone drinks it on the Day of the Dead, when the souls
return from another world, temporarily reborn to this world.
There are many present-day cultural associations of cacao
with fertility and regeneration. Hot chocolate is a symbol
of human blood, much like wine in Christianity. In the bad
old days of human sacrifice, the Aztec priests would wash
the blood off the sacrificial obsidian knives with hot chocolate
and give the resulting drink to calm the nerves of those
awaiting sacrifice.
In the iconography of Maya archeological sites, cacao is
associated with women and the Underworld, where sprouting
and regeneration are portrayed in myths with echoes of Persephone
and Demeter.
The cacao tree figures prominently in Maya creation myths,
being considered one of the components out of which humanity
were created. Dedicated deities embody the spirit of the
cacao tree and it features in the Popol Vuh as well as in
the 4 day long Deer Dance. I witnessed the cutting of a
tree which was to be used in the Deer Dance during the Harmonic
Convergence in August 1987. It took nearly an hour of explanation,
persuasion and extracting of permission from the spirits
of the forest and of the specific tree before any Maya would
dare to presume to touch it with an axe.
The Maya's 4-day long Deer Dance evokes the entire history
of the Maya, with male dancers dressed as black dwarves
in black masks referring to the era when the Maya had no
culture and lived in caves. Other male dancers in pink masks
and women's dresses evoke the horticultural matriarchal
era before 'the Grandmothers' created corn. The dance depicts
the moment when the leader of the men gently but firmly
tells the Grandmother: "Henceforth we men will grow
the corn." This was the moment when the holistic and
horticultural matriarchal world succumbed to the hierarchical
and agricultural world of priests, warriors and princes
that led to the extraordinary flowering of Maya culture,
short-lived but incredibly diverse, and then to sudden collapse
as maize cultivation stretched the ecosystem beyond its
limits. The Maya had abused their historic partners in coevolution.
Nowadays, smallholder cacao is increasingly shade grown,
bird friendly, sustainable and organic.
By contrast, plantation-grown cacao depends on management
as waged labour cannot be relied upon to show. The usual
capitalist measure of productivity, return on capital employed,
does not apply in cacao production, where land value bears
little relation to net income, which depends heavily on
chemical inputs and waged labour. It takes one foreman to
oversee about 4 labourers and the reliability of foremen
is hard to measure. If trees are planted at too great a
spacing then management becomes correspondingly more difficult
as control depends on lines of sight and voice commands.
Planting trees more closely creates more problems than it
solves. Low world prices and increasing input costs put
downward pressure on labour costs. This leads to increasing
dependence on slave labour. This occurs in the Ivory Coast
of non-Ivorian Africans, in Malaysia of tribal people. Many
of these are women, who are short enough to get under the
trees with backpack sprayers and then fog the tree with
fungicides.
Smallholder grown cacao offers the following advantages:
1 Trees enjoy considerable longevity, exceeding 100 years
2 A forest canopy performs the functions of chemicals and
low waged labour in providing nutrients and preventing disease,
thereby increasing carbon sequestration and biodiversity
3 Slavery is avoided
4 Sustainability is achieved as diseased trees are rare
and fossil fuel inputs are not required
5 Individual freedom and enterprise, the foundation of stable
democratic societies, is encouraged among smallholder farmers.
There is one cloud on the horizon for cacao. Genetic engineering
of rape seed is being developed which will produce oils
with the same characteristics as cocoa butter. If successful,
this will lead to the reduction of the cacao tree population
of the planet, with consequent loss of forest canopy and
forest biodiversity that is inherent to successful cacao
cultivation. A tonne of cacao costing $1000 yields approximately
1/2 tonne of cocoa powder worth $300 and 1/2 tonne of cocoa
butter worth $2000. If cocoa butter is genetically engineered
in rapeseed the overall value of cocoa beans will be greatly
diminished. This will lead to a considerable reduction in
land area devoted to cacao production, regrettably at a
time when mainstream thinking is moving back to the forest-based
and more extensive systems that preceded the ultra-intensification
of the 1980s. More cacao and more cocoa butter, if grown
on a sustainable smallholder basis, means sustainable agroforestry,
with all the consequent gains in CO2 sequestration, soil
protection, biodiversity and economic and political stability.
More rapeseed means more soil erosion, more biodiversity
loss, more concentration of power, more CO2 creation, more
poverty, more subsidies and more asthma.
What is it about chocolate that makes it addictive? Is it
good for you?.. What are the chemical constituents of cacao
that make it so appealing? How come the cacao tree hits
so many of our deepest needs right on the button? Here we
come back to my cow analogy - are cacao's properties part
of a pact with humans to ensure the plant's survival? A
plant that is clever enough to survive in the middle storey
can make itself indispensable to potential protectors.
Cacao is rich in;
1. Polyphenols - these are the antioxidants found in red
wine green tea, grapeseed and bilberry, are also present
in chocolate. A single 20g bar of dark chocolate contains
400mg of polyphenols, the minimum daily requirement.
2. Anandamine - this substance locks onto the cannabinoid
receptors, creating mild euphoria.
3. Phenethylamine - this is the substance that is found
in elevated levels in the brains of people who are 'in love.'
The association of chocolate with Valentine's Day and romance
has sound chemical foundations.
4. Methylxanthines - Cacao's theobromine and theophylline
are kinder stimulants than caffeine. They provide less coercive
stimulation than coffee as they take time to break down
into caffeine.
5. Magnesium - As you might expect from a plant that was
developed by women, cacao is the plant world's most concentrated
source of dietary magnesium. Falling magnesium levels create
the symptoms of premenstrual tension, hence the premenstrual
craving many women feel for chocolate.
6. Copper - an important co-factor in preventing anaemia
and in ensuring that iron makes effective haemoglobin. The
Maya view of hot chocolate as blood is more than a metaphor.
7. Cocoa butter - Cocoa butter is the perfect emollient
for the skin, far better than the petroleum jelly substituted
for it in cheap bodycare products. It melts at precisely
the human body temperature. That's why people love the mouthfeel
of chocolate. As the cocoa butter melts, it acts as a heat
exchanger on the palate, cooling the tongue as it goes from
a solid to a liquid state. Unlike hydrogenated fats, which
are often substituted for it in cheap confectionery, cocoa
butter stays liquid at normal body temperature, thereby
avoiding the occlusion of arteries and distortion of lipid
metabolising functions that hydrogenated fat consumption
entails.
You show me a cow that can deliver such a comprehensive
package of addictive, stress-reducing and health-enhancing
ingredients.
Maya Gold
In 1987 I visited a cacao grove for the first time, in Belize.
I was transfixed. I was with a film crew making a film about
the Deer Dance and the Crystal Skull, a Maya artefact, but
something told me that cacao would be part of my future.
It was one of those moments when something undefinable happened,
when the hair on the back of your neck stands on end. My
diary of the time includes drawings of chocolate bars called
'Maya Maya'. In 1991 a series of coincidences led me to
add a chocolate business to my trading portfolio, hitherto
a wholefood range that proudly proclaimed that we had never
sold anything containing sugar in 24 years. Our Green &
Black's organic chocolate was successful and in 1993 I contacted
the Maya cacao growers in Southern Belize. This soon led
to the production of Maya Gold, the first ever controlled
named origin chocolate. The marketing of Maya Gold emphasised
the biodiversity contribution and the social and economic
benefits of smallholder cacao. To date, just a few of these
benefits have been
1. Secondary school attendance has risen from under 10%
to over 90%
2 A logging permit granted to a Malaysian logging company
was successfully challenged by a coalition led by the cacao
growers' association and 100,000 hectares of rain forest
were spared the axe
3 The Kekchi and Mopan Maya, who communicate in English
because their Maya languages diverged such a long time ago,
have overcome mutual suspicion and work together in harmony
in the democratically constituted growers association
4 Women's rights and health have benefited. Although the
men do the planting, pruning and harvesting, the women control
the post-harvest fermentation and drying and therefore control
the end product and income from it. They are less likely
to spend it on beer than men, thereby ensuring it is invested
in education, clothing and health.
Maya Gold is now a supermarket staple in the UK. Of course,
it helps that it tastes delicious and echoes the Maya recipe
for hot chocolate, which uses allspice, vanilla and choisya
(Aztec Mock Orange) leaves as flavouring. In our recipe
we substitute orange for choisya but think we have recaptured
the essence of the Maya cacao experience.
The success of Maya Gold shows that consumers respond to
a processor's declared commitment to acknowledge and support
the integrity of the cacao plant, of its forest world and
of the people who tend it. They understand their place in
the web of life and the leveraging impact of their purchasing
decisions on issues of global concern. We are privileged
to have been able to make and illustrate this connection
and to profit from it, along with the Maya growers and the
cacao and the forests which cacao production generates.
Cacao Story Ifgene
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