Stories: Chocolate
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This Couple Aims to Make Ecuador the Cradle of Fine Chocolate Making
Most of the world's chocolate today comes from America and Europe, and it's made from cacao (cocoa) beans grown in Africa. But at least one South American company wants to make the best chocolate in the world from beans grown at home in the cradle of cacao. "Latin America has been sitting on a gold mine of cacao...
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What the Heck Is Shade-Grown Cacao? This Pricey Treat Is Actually Good for the Planet
In Ecuador’s Amazon region, above the banks of the swirling Aguarico River, Luis Chamba grows cacao - the basis of chocolate and cocoa butter - on his family’s tiny finca. The furrowed, football-shaped cacao pods flourish under a steamy canopy of banana trees, balsam, cedar, and other local plants. Chickens strut and cluck, and a...
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In the ‘Cradle of Cacao,’ Chocolate Brigades Fight for a Bigger Harvest
When cacao farmers like Emilio Rivera first heard of a government-backed initiativethat would help them prune branches and leaves from their trees, they were skeptical. After all, a lush cacao tree with more, not fewer, branches meant more profits, the farmers said. That's been the traditional way of thinking for generations of cacao farmers here in the Ecuadorian...