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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 15, 2017)
Commentary Page 10 Street Roots • Dec 15-21, 2017 The chocolate choice A small Costa Rican chocolate producer pursues a vision of shared wealth in an industry rife with abuse P H O T O S BY R IA H K N A P P BY RIAH KNAPP Paul and his wife Jeanne began Caribeans with the vision of creating the first local coffee shop in Puerto Viejo. About 12 years hick humid air stuck to my body as the ago, their friends Jeff and Sherry Ghiotto dense jungle canopy buzzed with were looking for someone to take care of sounds of rainforest creatures; the their 13-acre property. Paul and Jeanne took smell of exotic plants and mosquito repellent the job. The jungle property held roughly clung to the inside of my nose. A golden silk 2,000 cacao trees that had been abandoned orb-weaver spider sat in his web in front of due to the spread of a devastating fungal the object of our focus, a cluster of cacao blight. pods hanging from the trunk of a tree. We During their first years on the farm, Paul were there to learn the secrets of a small and Jeanne occasionally harvested the small Costa Rican chocolate producer, Caribeans. amount of surviving cacao, and experimented Nestled in the coastal jungle of Puerto Viejo with roasting it in their coffee roaster. Jeff de Talamanca, this Caribbean cacao farm commented that their first “bean to bar” embodies a chocolate industry centered experiment yielded a revolting chocolate bar, around justice and environmentally conscious but in time they learned how to perfect the production. process. According to a study done by Tulane They decided to revive the cacao forest by University, on child labor in West African bringing in local indigenous experts; using cacao growing areas, 2.26 million children natural farming methods they were able to between the ages of 5 and 17 were working in begin the restoration process and today many the chocolate industry in Ghana and Cote of the trees yield healthy cacao. Paul and d’Ivoire in 2013-14. These staggering Jeanne continue to work alongside Jeff and statistics unleash a turmoil of questions Sherry to nurture the Caribeans coffee shop around corruption in the chocolate industry and cacao. on the Ivory Coast and around the world. The We emerged at the top of the cacao forest cacao haven of Caribeans is sadly not the revealing a panoramic view of the Caribbean norm when it comes to large scale cacao ocean, where two indigenous workers sat on production and chocolate making. stools under a wooden shelter splitting open As we ventured deeper into the jungle, cacao pods with machetes. We gathered cacao pods of different colors - purple, around a large pile of cacao carcasses while yellow, red - hung under a towering forest Paul walked us through the “bean to bar” roof; Chocolate Master and Caribeans owner process. Every week, workers collect ripe Paul Johnson explained that the cacao forest cacao pods and bring them up to the shelter, is more of a rainforest ecosystem than a where they are split open; the fruit is traditional farm, it’s for this reason Caribeans separated into a bin and the pods discarded. doesn’t use any pesticides, fungicides or The bean-containing fruit is transferred into a chemical fertilizers to alter tree growth. bag, box, or pile to undergo fermentation Creating quality ingredients “in harmony” before drying in the heat of the sun. After the with the natural environment is one value beans are dried they are roasted, split and that sets Caribeans apart from other cacao winnowed, and refined with sugar. The beans producers. The use of pesticides would are then tempered and poured into molds, protect the cacao from hungry animals, but it and cooled to form solid bars. Later in an would inflict harm on the delicate forest email interview Paul said “the bean to bar ecosystems, devastating unique creatures like process has changed little over the last the red poison dart frog. century.” C O N T R IB U T IN G C O L U M N IS T T Riah Knapp is a Poet, artist, musician and lifelong learner living in Portland. Paul stated that Caribeans provides two to five local workers with wages much higher than that of other Costa Rican farmers. Caribeans grows organic cacao and sources the rest from 15 local families, offering to pay twice the market value. This supports neighboring farms and keeps money in the local economy, empowering farmers to produce higher quality cacao and participate in tasting the end products, which consist purely of organic cacao and organic cane sugar. Paul took a sliced pod from a worker, grasping its innards in his hand he pulled out a series of white bean-containing fruits smaller than the size of a quarter. Handing each of us a piece we tentatively bit into the pulp, the fruit was sweet while the bean was bitter. He asked us if we knew the major difference between the two workers present, and workers on most cacao farms. “Their age” he said. He explained that many cacao farms hire children 5 to 11 years old for cheap labor; on the Ivory Coast, children often leave home to work on cacao farms in order to send money to their families, with little knowledge of how to return. My heart dropped at the gravity of the situation. Paul told us that at Caribeans they only hire workers of appropriate ages, but this is not the norm when it comes to large scale cacao farming in many parts of the world. “I think there will always be customers for products that are produced cheaply and ignore the injustices that are behind the products they buy. But those who are more awake to the conditions of cacao producing countries will begin to look for more information about the products they consume, Paul said. His personal mission is to successfully model a new approach to the production chain,” in order to create a wealth of inheritance for the next generation, and to See CHOCOLATE, page 11 Above left, the beans in sid e a cacao pod. Above, workers a t Caribeans process the cacao.
