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   Chocolate: A Contemporary Confection | 1910—Today Obtaining Cacao— TODAY, TRADERS move cacao between SMALL FARMERS and MANUFACTURERS  Cacao comes from farms around the world.In the past century, chocolate’s popularity grew so astonishingly that, at times, cacao became scarce. As a result, throughout the world many equatorial countries that had never grown cacao before began to cultivate it. A few manufacturers today still own their own cacao farms, but the colonial plantations once controlled by Europe and America are gone. Most cacao is now produced by independent farmers or cooperative groups in unexpected places like Africa and Indonesia—far away from cacao’s original home in the tropical rainforests of the Americas. Cacao is still grown by hand. While machines have made chocolate faster to produce and cheaper to buy, they haven’t changed the way in which cacao is grown. Chocolate manufacturers must still purchase cacao from farmers who tend, harvest, ferment, dry, and pack the seeds by hand. Cacao is traded as a global commodity. Cacao farmers sell their product to chocolate-processing companies through traders at the Coffee, Sugar, and Cocoa Exchange (similar to a stock exchange). Chocolate manufacturers, cacao importers and exporters, trade houses, and producers all buy and sell contracts for cacao crops before those crops are even harvested. Continue to Making Chocolate |
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