![]() ![]() Then they carefully ferment and dry the beans in a way that highlights the best flavors and gets rid of any off tastes. Craft Chocolateĭeep in the Amazon, farmers are harvesting cacao beans. In short, farmers aren’t paid fairly, and the quality of the beans is low. “We didn’t have a good life,” he told me recently. Over half of the population there lived below the poverty line, and most people ate only a handful of greens and cornmeal porridge once a day. For example, Livingston Mwakipesile grew up sharing a bed with his brother in their tiny hut in Tanzania, and because he had to help his parents on the plantation, he didn’t start school until he was 14-and then only attended for three years. ![]() These subsistence farmers are surviving hand to mouth, often malnourished and barely eking out a living. If they’re not, they’ll simply go hungry. That’s why in cacao-growing countries from Nigeria to Ecuador, these companies as well as local governments push farmers to grow high-yield but low-quality varieties like CCN 51, a man-made concoction that can produce as much as four times the world average but tastes, in food technologist Darin Sukha’s words, “ dirty and undesirable.” Mars and Cadbury have both admitted to using CCN 51.īack at the farm, if workers are lucky, they’ll find someone to buy the beans at a very low price - think about 80 cents per pound. Cacao is usually considered a cash crop, no different from cotton or rubber, and as such, companies like Mars want cacao that grows consistently and sturdily, no muss no fuss. Under the sweltering African sun, farmers are working as fast as they can, hacking football-shaped pods off trees and hurling them into big vats. ![]()
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