Cocoa and Chocolate Part 8

The _Gordian_ estimates that Venezuela sent out from her three princ.i.p.al ports in 1919 some 16,226 tons of cacao.

_THE WEST INDIES._

In the map of South America the princ.i.p.al West Indian islands producing cacao are marked. Their production in 1918 was as follows:

CACAO BEANS EXPORTED. Percentage of Metric Tons. World's production.

Trinidad (British) 26,177 9.7 San Domingo 18,839 7.0 Grenada (British) 6,704 2.5 Jamaica (British) 3,000 1.1 Haiti 2,272 0.8 St. Lucia (British) 500 0.2 Dominica (British) 300 0.1 St. Vincent (British) 70 0.02 ----------- --------------- West Indies Total 57,862 tons 21.42 per cent.

----------- --------------- Br. West Indies 36,751 tons 13.6 per cent.

TRINIDAD AND GRENADA.[3]

[3] Cacao production in 1919: Trinidad 27,185 tons; Grenada 4,020 tons.

Cacao was grown in the West Indies in the seventeenth century, and the inhabitants, after the destructive "blast," which utterly destroyed the plantations in 1727, bravely replanted cacao, which has flourished there ever since. The cacaos of Trinidad and Grenada have long been known for their excellence, and it is mainly from Trinidad that the knowledge of methods of scientific cultivation and preparation has been spread to planters all round the equator. The cacao from Trinidad (famous alike for its cacao and its pitch lake) has always held a high place in the markets of the world, although a year or two ago the inclusion of inferior cacao and the practice of claying was abused by a few growers and merchants. With the object of stopping these abuses and of producing a uniform cacao, there was formed a Cacao Planters' a.s.sociation, whose business it is to grade and bulk, and sell on a co-operative basis, the cacao produced by its members. This experiment has proved successful, and in 1918 the a.s.sociation handled the cacao from over 100 estates.

We may expect to see more of these cacao planters' a.s.sociations formed in various parts of the world, for they are in line with the trend of the times towards large, and ever larger, unions and combinations.

Trinidad is also progressive in its system of agricultural education and in its formation of agricultural credit societies. The neighbouring island of Grenada is mountainous, smaller than the Isle of Wight and (if the Irish will forgive me) greener than Erin's Isle. The methods of cacao cultivation in vogue there might seem natural to the British farmer, but they are considered remarkable by cacao planters, for in Grenada the soil on which the trees grow is forked or tilled. Possibly from this follows the equally remarkable corollary that the cacao trees flourish without a single shade tree. The preparation of the bean receives as much care as the cultivation of the tree, and the cacao which comes from the estates has an unvaried constancy of quality, not infrequently giving 100 per cent. of perfectly prepared beans. It is largely due to this that the cacao from this small island occupies such an important position on the London market.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP OF SOUTH AMERICA AND THE WEST INDIES.

Only cacao-producing areas are marked.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WORKERS ON A CACAO PLANTATION.

(Messrs. Cadbury's estate in Trinidad.)]

The cacao from San Domingo is known commercially as _Samana_ or _Sanchez_. A fair proportion is of inferior quality, and is little appreciated on the European markets. The bulk of it goes to America. The production in 1919 was about 23,000 tons.

_AFRICAN CACAO._

In the map of Africa the princ.i.p.al producing areas are marked. Their production in 1918 was as follows:

CACAO BEANS EXPORTED.

Metric Tons. Percentage of World's production.

Gold Coast (British) 66,343 24.5 San Thome 19,185 7.1 Lagos (British) 10,223 3.8 Fernando Po 4,220 1.6 Cameroons 1,250 0.4 Togo 1,000 0.4 Belgian Congo 875 0.3 ------------ -------------- African Total 103,096 tons 38.1 per cent.

------------ -------------- British Africa 76,566 tons 28.3 per cent.

THE GOLD COAST (_Industria floremus_).

_Accra Cacao._

The name recalls stories of a romantic and awful past, in which gold and the slave trade played their terrible part. Happily these are things of the past; so is the "deadly climate." We are told that it is now no worse than that of other tropical countries. According to Sir Hugh Clifford, until recently Governor of the Gold Coast, the "West African Climatic Bogie" is a myth, and the "monumental reputation for unhealthiness" undeserved. When De Candolle wrote concerning cacao, "I imagine it would succeed on the Guinea Coast,"[4] as the West African coast is sometimes called, he achieved prophecy, but he little dreamed how wonderful this success would be. The rise and growth of the cacao-growing industry in the Gold Coast is one of the most extraordinary developments of the last few decades. In thirty years it has increased its export of cacao from nothing to 40 per cent. of the total of the world's production.

[4] De Candolle, _Origin of Cultivated Plants_, quoted by R.

Whymper.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAP OF AFRICA--WITH ONLY CACAO-PRODUCING AREAS MARKED.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FORESh.o.r.e AT ACCRA, WITH STACKS OF CACAO READY FOR s.h.i.+PMENT.

Reproduced by permission of the Editor of "West Africa".]

PRODUCTION OF CACAO ON THE GOLD COAST.

Year. Quant.i.ty. Value.

1891 0 tons (80 lbs.) 4 1896 34 tons 2,276 1901 980 tons 42,837 1906 8,975 tons 336,269 1911 30,798 tons 1,613,468 1916 72,161 tons 3,847,720

1917 90,964 tons 3,146,851 1918 66,343 tons 1,796,985 1919 177,000 tons 8,000,000

The conditions of production in the Gold Coast present a number of features entirely novel. We hear from time to time of concessions being granted in tropical regions to this or that company of enterprising European capitalists, who employ a few Europeans and send them to the area to manage the industry. The inhabitants of the area become the manual wage earners of the company, and too often in the l.u.s.t for profits, or as an offering to the G.o.d of commercial efficiency, the once easy and free life of the native is lost for ever and a form of wage-slavery takes its place with doubtful effects on the life and health of the workers. In defence it is pointed out that yet another portion of the earth has been made productive, which, without the initiative of the European capitalist, must have lain fallow. But in the Gold Coast the "indolent" native has created a new industry entirely native owned, and in thirty years the Gold Coast has outstripped all the areas of the world in quant.i.ty of produce. Forty years ago the natives had never seen a cacao tree, now at least fifty million trees flourish in the colony. This could not have happened without the strenuous efforts of the Department of Agriculture. The Gold Coast now stands head and shoulders above any other producing area for quant.i.ty. The problem of the future lies in the improvement of quality, and difficult though this problem be, we cannot doubt, given a fair chance, that the far-sighted and energetic Agricultural Department will solve it. Indeed, it must in justice be pointed out that already a very marked improvement has been made, and now fifty to one hundred times as much good fermented cacao is produced as there was ten years ago.[5] However, if a high standard is to be maintained, the work of the Department of Agriculture must be supplemented by the willingness of the cacao buyers to pay a higher price for the better qualities.

[5] "Towards this latter result Messrs. Cadbury Bros., Ltd., rendered great a.s.sistance. This firm sent representatives into the country, who proved to the natives that they were willing to pay an enhanced price for cocoa prepared in a manner suitable for their requirements. A fair amount of cocoa was purchased by them, and demonstrations were made in some places with regard to the proper mode of fermentation."

(The Agricultural and Forest Products of British West Africa. _Imperial Inst.i.tute Handbook_, by G.C. Dudgeon).

[Ill.u.s.tration: CARRIERS CONVEYING BAGS OF CACAO TO SURF BOATS, ACCRA.

Reproduced by permission of the Editor of "West Africa."]

The phenomenal growth of this industry is the more remarkable when we consider the lack of roads and beasts of burden. The usual pack animals, horses and oxen, cannot live on the Gold Coast because of the tsetse fly, which spreads amongst them the sleeping sickness. And so the native, used as he is to heavy head-loads, naturally adopted this as his first method of transport, and hundreds of the less affluent natives arrive at the collecting centres with great weights of cacao on their heads. "Women and children, light-hearted, chattering and cheerful, bear their 60 lbs. head-loads with infinite patience. Heavier loads, approaching sometimes two hundredweight, are borne by grave, silent Hausa-men, often a distance of thirty or forty miles."

[Ill.u.s.tration: CROSSING THE RIVER AT NSAWAM, GOLD COAST.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DRYING CACAO BEANS AT MRAMRA.

Reproduced by permission from the Imperial Inst.i.tute series of Handbooks to the Commercial Resources of the Tropics.]

One day, not so many years ago, some more ingenious native in the hills at the back of the Coast, filled an old palm-oil barrel with cacao and rolled it down the ways to Accra. And now to-day it is a familiar sight to see a man trundling a huge barrel of cacao, weighing half a ton, down to the coast. The sound of a motor horn is heard, and he wildly turns the barrel aside to avoid a disastrous collision with the new, weird transport animal from Europe. Motor lorries have been used with great effect on the coast for some seven years; they have the advantage over pack animals that they do not succ.u.mb to the bite of the dreaded tsetse fly, but nevertheless not a few derelicts lie, or stand on their heads, in the ditches, the victims of over-work or accident.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHOOTING CACAO FROM THE ROAD TO THE BEACH, ACCRA.]

Having brought the cacao to the coast, there yet remains the lighterage to the ocean liner, which lies anch.o.r.ed some two miles from the sh.o.r.e, rising and falling to the great rollers from the broad Atlantic. A long boat is used, manned by some twenty swarthy natives, who glory--vocally--in their pa.s.sage through the dangerous surf which roars along the sloping beach. The cacao is piled high on wood racks and covered with tarpaulins and seldom shares the fate of pa.s.sengers and crew, who are often drenched in the surf before they swing by a crane in the primitive mammy chair, high but not dry, on board the hospitable Elder Dempster liner.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROLLING CACAO, GOLD COAST.]

SAN THOMe (AND PRINCIPE).

We now turn from the Gold Coast and the success of native owners.h.i.+p to another part of West Africa, a scene of singular beauty, where the Portuguese planters have triumphed over savage nature.

Two lovely islands, San Thome and its little sister isle of Principe, lie right on the Equator in the Gulf of Guinea, about two hundred miles from the African mainland. A warm, lazy sea, the sea of the doldrums, sapphire or turquoise, or, in deep shaded pools, a radiant green, joyfully foams itself away against these fairy lands of tossing palm, dense vegetation, rus.h.i.+ng cascades, and purple, precipitous peaks. A soil of volcanic origin is covered with a rich humus of decaying vegetation, and this, with a soft humid atmosphere, makes an ideal home for cacao.

The bean, introduced in 1822, was not cultivated with diligence till fifty years ago. To-day the two islands, which together have not half the area of Surrey, grow 32,000 metric tons of cacao a year, or about one-tenth of the world's production.[6] The income of a single planter, once a poor peasant, has amounted to hundreds of thousands sterling.

[6] The _Gordian's_ estimate for the amount exported in 1919 is 40,766 tons.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROLLING CACAO, GOLD COAST.

Reproduced by permission of the Editor of "West Africa."]