How cocoa beans are grown and harvested

Cocoa pods grow straight out of the trunk, and the beans inside must be rotted a little before they taste right.

stations: 4
things downstream: 10

The short version

Cacao trees grow in hot, rainy land within 20 degrees of the equator, and their pods sprout directly from the trunk. Workers cut ripe pods by hand with a machete, split them open and scoop out the 30 to 50 seeds. The wet beans are piled for several days to ferment, then dried.

Grow in the tropics

Cacao trees thrive only in hot, rainy places close to the equator, and a tree takes five years to start bearing. Pods are 17 to 20 cm long, with a thick leathery rind around sweet pulp and the seeds.
Cut ripe pods by hand

Pods ripen at different times, so pickers return three or four times a week through the season. They cut the ripe and nearly ripe ones, judged by color, with a curved knife on a long pole, taking care not to damage the spot where future flowers form.

three to four visits a week
Crack open and pile up

Pods are split with a machete or knife, the rind is thrown away, and the pulp and seeds are heaped in bins or on grates for several days. The pulp liquefies and drains off, and the seeds turn from pale yellow or violet to brown.
Dry the fermented beans

After fermenting, the beans are dried. If the sweating step is cut short, the cocoa tastes like raw potatoes and goes moldy easily, and if it is interrupted the batch can be ruined.

End of the lineCocoa beans Next it goes into cocoa butter, chocolate, cocoa powder.

Worth repeating

About 400 dried beans are needed to make 1 pound (450 g) of chocolate.
West Africa grows nearly 81% of the world's cocoa.
The cacao tree was first domesticated at least 5,300 years ago, in what is now Ecuador.