Dale Walters - Chocolate Crisis: Climate Change and Other Threats to the Future of Cacao

Chocolate Crisis

Climate Change and Other Threats to the Future of Cacao

DALE WALTERS

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA PRESS

Gainesville

Copyright 2021 by Dale Walters

All rights reserved

Published in the United States of America.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Walters, Dale, author.

Title: Chocolate crisis : climate change and other threats to the future of cacao / Dale Walters.

Description: Gainesville : University of Florida Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020023711 (print) | LCCN 2020023712 (ebook) | ISBN 9781683401674 (hardback) | ISBN 9781683401940 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: Chocolate industry. | CacaoClimatic factors. | Crops and climate. | Climatic changesSocial aspects. | Cocoa tradeForecasting.

Classification: LCC HD9200.A2 W35 2021 (print) | LCC HD9200.A2 (ebook) | DDC 338.1/7374dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020023711

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020023712

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To Beverley,
thank you

When one thinks of the marvelously nourishing and stimulating virtue of cocoa, and of the exquisite and irresistible dainties prepared from it, one cannot wonder that the great Linnaeus should have named it theo broma, the food of the gods

BRANDON HEAD,
The Food of the Gods: A Popular Account of Cocoa
[London: R. Brimley Johnson, 1903].

Despite my lifelong love of cacao, and chocolate, I am not a cacao researcher. I spent 40 years working on diseases of temperate crops. So, I knew that when I embarked on the journey of writing this book, I would need guidance along the way from people who have actually worked on cacao and the diseases and pests that afflict it. The first person who came to mind when I first thought of writing this book (I was walking the dogs on the sand dunes near my home in Scotland at the time) was Harry Evans. I had met Harry back in the 1980s when we tried to get a joint project going, and I knew of his work on cacao diseases even before that, when I was an undergraduate in the mid-1970s. Harry agreed to read some chapters for me, but he actually read the entire manuscript. He provided a great many helpful suggestions and corrected mistakes. I am truly grateful to him. Martijn ten Hoopen of CIRAD and the Cocoa Research Centre of the University of the West Indies (UWI) at St. Augustine in Trinidad, very kindly read the chapters on diseases and pests, and I am grateful to him for his corrections and suggestions. I am also grateful to Frances Bekele of the Cocoa Research Centre at UWI in Trinidad for reading through the early chapters of the book, and for her encouragement. Four anonymous reviewers provided many suggestions and much food for thought, and I am grateful to them for the effort they spent going through my manuscript. Any errors that remain are entirely my responsibility.

Most of the images that appear in the book were kindly provided by Harry Evans, Martijn ten Hoopen, and Ashley Parasram of Trinidad and Tobago Fine Cocoa Company Limited. The image shown in was provided by Simon Martin of Pennsylvania State University, USA.

When I first approached University Press of Florida (UPF) with the idea for this book, Linda Bathgate was very supportive and I am grateful to her for believing in the book. I am immensely grateful to Meredith Morris-Babb at UPF for seeing me through the revisions and guiding me as the book made its journey toward publication. She has been an immense help to me, dealing with my many questions with good humor and understanding.

Writing this book has been a genuine pleasure, taking me back to my childhood, and providing me the chance to immerse myself in the world of cacao. I have my late father, Ronald Kevin Walters, to thank for nurturing my early interest in cacao. But my greatest thanks go to my long-suffering wife, Beverley, who loves and supports me through all of my writing journeys.

I spent my childhood in Trinidad. I was not born in Trinidad, but some 4,400 miles away in the Welsh seaside town of Tenby. How I ended up in Trinidad is an amazing story. My dad, a Tenby boy, was in the merchant navy and while in the Caribbean had to be rushed to the nearest hospital with acute appendicitis. The nearest hospital was in Port-of-Spain in the island of Trinidad, and following the operation to remove his inflamed appendix, he started up a conversation with the young man in the bed next to him. In due course, his new friends sister came to visit, and it was love at first sight. My dad was not quite 18 and had to return to the UK for his national service. My mum followed him to Tenby, where they were married in 1956 and I was born the following year. After his national service, my parents decided that a life in tropical Trinidad sounded appealing, and when I was three, they set sail for Port-of-Spain. All my childhood memories are of Trinidad, and some of the most vivid involve cacao (Theobroma cacao), not the drink, nor for that matter any of the confections made from cacao, but the tree. You see, my dad worked on various plantations in Trinidad, many of which grew cacao.

Although my earliest memories involve watching cartoons (something I still do, despite being 62), one clear memory from my early childhood is of walking through trees in a cacao plantation with my dad. I was probably about 8 years old and at that time we lived in the northeast of Trinidad, in the tiny village of Toco. Situated in the beautiful Northern Range, Toco is the most northeasterly village in Trinidad, and back in the mid-1960s, when our family lived there, it was remote. In fact, up until 1930, there were no roads connecting Toco to the rest of the island; apparently, the main way to reach Toco was using the island steamship service. I remember the seemingly interminable car journeys to get to our house. But the hours spent in the car were worth it. Toco has the most spectacular scenery, with a rocky coastline and sandy beaches where you could play all day without seeing anyone else. Our house was on a hill, surrounded by forest, but with a view northward to the rocky coastline, the crashing waves, and beyond that, the island of Tobago. My dad was working on a cacao estate, and just a short walk from the house was all it took to be surrounded by cacao trees. I remember walking with him into what looked like forestin fact it was pretty much forest, since cacao trees are grown in the shade of much taller trees, which in Trinidad were mostly Immortelle (Erythrina poeppigiana). These giants grow to a height of about 25 meters, and they flower at the end of the rainy season, in December. Immortelle flowers are a brilliant orange, and around Christmas the whole area was a mosaic of dark green leaves and wonderful orange blossom.

If I close my eyes, I can transport myself back to my childhood, back to my eight-year-old self walking through the cacao and Immortelle with my dad. It was a world of shade, of light and dark, and of silence, interrupted only by the songs of birds I could not see. What sticks in my mind are the cacao pods: large, oval-shaped structures, many of which were red, though some were orange or yellow. The weirdest thing about the pods was that they just hung from the main trunk of the tree. That was so unlike any other fruiting tree I had seenmango (