Chocolate and Sustainable Cocoa Farming

Chocolate consumers and environmental and social activists are increasingly less inclined to accept a situation where cocoa and chocolate production exploits rainforests and smallholder farmers in the tropics. With the exhaustion of forest resources for growing cocoa cheaply, the handful of multinational food conglomerates that now dominate chocolate manufacturing are becoming concerned about a sustainable supply of cocoa beans and are becoming involved in efforts to assist farmers and ensure a stable supply chain. Organisations are being developed to certify that cocoa production is environmentally and socially acceptable. This book introduces the biology of cocoa, and the history of cocoa domestication, planting and chocolate manufacture. It describes how cocoa can be grown with other useful species in an environmentally sound way to increase production on existing farms, to reduce incursion into forests, restore biodiversity, and empower and improve the livelihoods of the six million farming families in the tropics who depend on it.