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Strengthening the Sector on the
Supply Side through Innovation
Fine Cocoa:
The legendary fine cocoa sector of the
Caribbean is entering a period of renaissance.
The transformation has been triggered by the
application of innovative industry models that
are more relevant to the prevailing social and
economic context in Caribbean countries. This
sector’s transition is facilitating investors and
stakeholders to capitalise on the many attractive
opportunities infine cocoa, drivenby the increased
global consumer demand for these quality beans
and their diverse consumer derivatives.
Fine cocoa beans have been grown, dried and
fermented in the Caribbean for well over 300
years. When the crop was first established by
the colonial powers, using cocoa plants from
South and Central America, regional countries
were in an altogether different dispensation.
Those countries, with their cheap labour and
land, were producing raw materials (dried cocoa
beans) as inputs for value-added processing in the
metropolitan countries where the quality of the
product was held in high regard.
Trinidad and Tobago, in particular, was a cocoa
dominated economy accounting for 20% of the
world’s total production, prior to the discovery
of crude oil and the establishment of the twin-
island republic’s petrochemical industry. Over
30,000 tonnes of cocoa beans were exported at
the peak of production in the 1920s. Although
the sector went into decline in the post-war
period, to this day there are still several large
cocoa estates (over 500 acres in size) which
are exclusively growing the single cocoa crop,
primarily for export of the beans.
However, across the wider Caribbean there
are, in reality, very few cocoa farmers. Rather
there are many subsistence farmers who grow
cocoa as one of several crops and their acreages
are, individually, fairly small. The traditional
construct of the cocoa sector was such that these
small farmers could only sell their freshwet cocoa
beans to a government-controlled centralised
processing facility where it was purchased at a
fairly fixed price, then fermented and dried. The
same government entity (usually designated as
the country’s Cocoa Board) also controlled the
onward sale of these processed beans to buyers
overseas – traders and/or end users. Most of the
value-added processing into cocoa butter, cocoa
paste, cocoa liquor, chocolate, etc. was done in
these foreign countries.
As we entered the 21st Century, the Caribbean
still had cocoa trees and the cocoa pods from
which the ubiquitous chocolate food and
drink ingredients of Western diets are derived.
Although much was changing and continues to
evolve – in terms of the downstream chocolate
production worldwide and global consumption
trend towards dark chocolate, health drinks,
super foods, mini “bean-to-bar” processing
facilities, etc.– the source of cocoa growing
in the Caribbean fields had hardly changed.
Yet, beyond the rural communities and
cocoa fields, most Caribbean countries have
developed in many aspects with the emergence
of large metropolitan cities. Even the smaller
islands have economically important tourist
resort towns. Urban migration appears to
conflict with rural economic development.
In these developing countries, the economics
of growing cocoa beans has radically changed
since its inception, rendering the current
cocoa industry model obsolete and in need of
significant innovation.
By Vernon Barrett
OUR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
54
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