A GIFT FROM THE RAINFOREST
Chocolate treats in red heart-shaped boxes are almost synonymous with Valentine’s Day. Then come the Easter bunnies and cream filled chocolate eggs. If you don’t eat a little chocolate once in a while, you surely must think about it.
Chocolates are “Riches from the Rainforest” says author Robert Burleigh in a well-researched 2003 book by that title. “Why is chocolate so alluring?” asks Burleigh. “Experts still aren’t sure. So perhaps there is nothing to do but savor the taste as well as understand the complicated process that has gone into producing this luscious food, truly a gift from the rainforest.”
We are even more dependent on the rest of the world for chocolate than we are for oil. Thankfully, chocolate comes from a renewable resource. The cacao trees that produce the beans that are the source of all chocolate in the world originated in the Amazon rain forest. Its scientific name is Theobroma cacao and it thrives only in the conditions of the tropics.
All of our chocolate has a connection with farmers on small farms -- ninety percent of beans are grown on twelve acres or less. The trees need tropical climate, soil, water, sunshine, and a certain tiny insect that can work its way into the flower for pollination.
The cacao tree takes about six years to produce pods each containing about forty purplish, bitter-tasting, lima-bean-size beans. The pods take up to six months to ripen. Under good conditions, a single mature cacao tree produces thirty to forty pods in a year from which can be derived three to four pounds of chocolate. The small football shaped pod contains slightly lemon-flavored pulp about as dense as the flesh of a pear.
Processing the beans is labor intensive and is still done, as it was thousands of years ago. The pods are cut from the tree with machetes. The beans are scooped from the pods by hand and fermented on the ground in their own pulp for up to six days, then dried outdoors in the sun for up to two weeks. In 100-pound bags dried beans are carried on foot, sometimes miles, to a truck than can take them to a port where they are carried around the world for processing.
The chocolate we enjoy comes from the beans inside the pods of the cacao tree and become commonly known as cocoa beans after they are processed. Much popular literature today replaces the term “cacao” with “cocoa” to refer to the trees, the unprocessed beans, and the processed beans.
Worth visiting are three interactive exhibits online at The Field Museum of Chicago website, www.fieldmuseum.org/chocolate/ where you can explore Manufacturing Chocolate from Seed to Sweet, the Chocolate Challenge (the 2,000 year history of chocolate), and Cacao Farming.

Della Moen, Earth Team Volunteer, NRCS/Stephenson Soil and Water
Conservation District, an equal opportunity provider and employer, 02/04/09 (for publication on 2/14/09 in the Journal-Standard, Freeport, Illinois). Della can be reached at info@stephensonswcd.org