This is a very cool article about sustainable cocoa growing in Brazil. Maintaining the natural ecosystem means not only better chocolate yields, it generates greater carbon offset, and a healthier planet. In fact, poor, over farmed soil can be returned to healthy biomass in only a few years of conscientious planting and care. And it's nice to see the big companies recognizing the value of sustainability.
As a society we like to toss around the word sustainable a lot. This is a great concept; sustaining what is important for a rich life for generations to come. There's also another word that isn't as popular yet but certainly equally as important "restorative". Can we not only stop the degradation but reverse it? Yes.
Cacao as a mono-crop really isn't sustainable. Cacao, by biological design, is an understory tree in humid tropical forests (the rain forest). Cacao as part of a bio- and vertically diverse landscape can play an important role in sustainable and restorative agriculture. By acting as an economic anchor crop that incents farmers to plant and cultivate we may have a good business reason to restore the rain forest.
The only reason for a farmer to do this, however, is because there's value for them and their families. One of my goals is to bring real value back to chocolate and cacao. Enough value that farmers will want to restore fallow landscapes. As we find value in forest food and forest textiles and even forest energy (palm as bio-fuel that's processed and consumed in the countries its grown in... even fueling a truck that takes the cacao to market!!)farmers will not only sustain outer edges of forests but even begin to expand the forest.
Don't only dream with me Theonistas... make it so!
Posted by: Joe | November 29, 2007 at 10:03 PM