Routes Of Presence: From bean to bar: the story of Dominican Republic fair trade cacao

It is the middle of Earth Week -- the perfect incentive to continue sharing about my recent trip to build a gravity-fed water drinking water system in the Dominican Republic. Some exciting things have happened this week:

1. My article on voluntourism, with photographs from my trip, was published by Bootsnall.

2. My cousin gave birth to her second son (ok, so this happened while I was away, but I only found out about it since returning).

3. I applied for two jobs, both of which would involve moving.

4. I made an excellent research connection for a novel that I am working on.

5. One of my best friends graduated from her CLS course, and was offered her first job as a lab tech (and we got to go out to breakfast at Orphan to celebrate ;-).

and 6. Free power yoga in the park has started up again for the season, which means that I have many Saturdays of doing yoga outside under a blue sky with an awesome group of people to look forward to.

Yoga in the park. All 130 of us that turned out for class this past Saturday.

It has been a good week so far. I have finally, just this week, stopped waking up in the middle of the night in a panic, with absolutely no idea where I am, and I am finally starting to have more time for personal reflection on the amazing journey that this recent trip with Green & Black's truly was.

In my last blog entry, our group had only just started our journey in the Dominican Republic. We were still fresh-faced, and pampered with flushing toilets and trickling showers.

Photo by Ariana Salvo. May not be used without permission.

On day three of our trip we woke up early, loaded our packs onto the bus that was to drive us to our project site, and headed out of town. The bus wound its way through the tangled streets, dodging mopeds and pedestrians and braking to avoid stray dogs. We emerged onto a long street that ran parallel with the ocean. A festival from the weekend had left the entire strip littered with garbage that lined the gutter, was caught in the vegetation, and made the sidewalk useless. Crews of workers were out with garbage bags, tiny ants in a sea of waste. Slowly, slowly, the city gave way to suburbs, and suburbs to the fresh green of rice fields; bony cows grazing lazily in pastures; small ramshackle villages that sprung up here and there along the road.

Photo by Ariana Salvo. May not be used without permission.

We crossed a wide open valley, a river, and finally pulled in through the gates of CONACADO's cocoa processing plant.

CONACADO, the cooperative that dries, processes and sells the fair trade cocoa that is bought by companies like Green & Black's (and which represents 30% of the Dominican Republic's cocoa export market), welcomed us with hot cups of thick cocoa made from a mixture of cocoa, milk, sugar, ground oats, cinnamon and cloves.

Photo by Ariana Salvo. May not be used without permission.

Our bellies full of sugar and chocolate, we sat down to a presentation about how cocoa is processed before being shipped out, and the various forms of end products that are sold (cocoa butter, cocoa powder, and solidified cocoa). 95% of the cocoa processed by CONACADO is exported. 5% is processed into cocoa powder and sold on the local market for drinking chocolate.

Photo by Ariana Salvo. May not be used without permission.

Cocoa is harvested locally by farm owners who usually hire extra help. The pods are removed from the trees and broken open using a machete. The beans are scooped out of the pods.

Photo by Robert Grgurev. May not be used without permission.

Photo by Ariana Salvo. May not be used without permission.

There are usually between 40 and 50 beans in a pod. The beans are then either spread out to dry locally, which reduces the quality of cocoa and the price that the farmers can get for their beans when they arrive at the processing plant, or transported immediately to the processing facility moist, to be fermented. Dry beans are called Sanchez, and are considered inferior to Hispaniola beans, which are undergo a fermentation process before being dried that give them a distinctive colour, flavour and aroma. In the past most cocoa coming from the Dominican Republic was Sanchez cocoa. The reason for this was lack of access to processing facilities necessary to properly ferment and process Hispaniola beans. The island developed export markets to the US, where the Sanchez cocoa would be mixed with some higher quality cocoa, and made into low-quality chocolates that were sold for a low price. In general, American consumers have not traditionally been willing to pay higher prices for higher quality chocolate, so a stable market for Sanchez beans remains. Over time, as farmers have developed the processing facilities to produce Hispaniola beans, CONACADO has developed business relationships with European chocolate companies interested in high quality gourmet cocoa. Today there are fifteen countries recognized world-wide as gourmet cocoa producers. The Dominican Republic is one of these.

If a farmer wants his/her beans to be sold at the price for Hispaniola, the beans have to get from the pod to the processing facility in under six hours. This means a lot of hard work by a lot of people, and ready access to a vehicle to transport the beans down to the fermentation and drying facility as soon as they are bagged.

Photo by Ariana Salvo. May not be used without permission.

Once the beans arrive in the facility they are weighed and then unloaded into large fermentation bins, where the cocoa and sugar turn into alcohol, which in turn becomes acetic acid. The beans remain in the first bin for 48 hours. They are transferred to a second fermentation bin for another 24 hours, and finally to a third fermentation bin for another 24 hours before finally being sent to be dried.

Photo by Ariana Salvo. May not be used without permission.


Photo by Ariana Salvo. May not be used without permission.

The beans are spread out on mesh screens for 6-8 days, being agitated every hour to ensure even drying. The first few days the drying process progresses slowly, but the following days the drying process speeds up.

Photo by Ariana Salvo. May not be used without permission.

Once the beans are sufficiently dry, they are moved to a drum that is heated using coconut husks. The temperature in the drum never exceeds 50 degrees, which guarantees that the beans are drying and not roasting. The beans dry in the drum for up to 62 hours. Overall, the drying process can take between 10 and 14 days, depending on the weather and humidity level.

Photo by Ariana Salvo. May not be used without permission.

Basilio, Ramon Emilio and I with two others at the cocoa drying facility. Photo by Ariana Salvo. May not be used without permission.

From the drying facility, the cocoa is sent to the processing plant, where the beans are thoroughly cleaned and then toasted. Toasting is the most important part of the process in terms of determining the flavour of the cocoa. Toasting concentrates the aroma, cracks the bean open and takes the outside off, and separates the shell from the inside.

Photo by Ariana Salvo. May not be used without permission.

The objective in the processing of cocoa at this point is to grind the cocoa into thick powder. The refining process makes sure that 99% of the cocoa is the right texture. If it it does not have the right texture, it is sent back through the refining process again until it meets the necessary characteristics to pass on to the next phase. The cocoa butter is separated from the cocoa by putting it under a tremendous amount of pressure. Cocoa butter is white in colour. Once the cocoa butter is filtered, it is put into 25kg boxes, which are in turn loaded into 20 tonne containers for export. The powder is put into 25 kg bags, which are loaded into 25 tonne boxes for export. Out of 100lbs of liquid cocoa, 45lbs becomes cocoa butter. Cocoa has to be cooled very slowly in cooling tunnels. This gradual cooling process is called tempering.

CONACADO does not currently produce its own chocolate bars. It sends cocoa off to companies like Green & Black's, who turn it into the delicious chocolate bars that I love to eat.

Photo by Ariana Salvo. May not be used without permission.

They are, however, developing their processing capacity, and hope to be able to make their own chocolate in the future, which will raise the price that they are able to get for their cocoa, and therefore the profits going back to individual communities.