This evening I planted a cacao tree in the moon light. We may have about 180 trees in the ground now with only 30 or so trees fully producing. I keep saying this over and over but wish I planted 500 of them 5 years ago. Then I would be making a lot more chocolate by now. We’ll have to wait till July 2022 to run our next batches.
One of my chocolate heroes is Mott Green who started The Grenada Chocolate Company in 1999. They are the first chocolate making company in a cacao producing country. Which is hard to believe since solid chocolate was invented in 1847 in England.
I think Mott Green coined the phrase Tree-to-Bar and around this time many chocolate makers saw the potential in artisanal single origin chocolate and started to set up shop around the world in the cacao growing belt.
Mott and his co-founders created a plethora of employment opportunities in an otherwise economically disadvantaged rural village. He established a 200 acre cacao growers cooperative that encouraged farming practices without the use of chemical herbicides, pesticides, or fertilizers. He helped all of his farmers obtain organic certification. Till this day the company pays their farmers more than the fair market price for their cacao beans.
Mott Green literally kept raising the bar by powering his chocolate factory using 100% solar energy. He also sailed tens of thousands of chocolate bars across the Atlantic ocean making it the first carbon neutral trans-Atlantic mass chocolate delivery. They even arranged couriers on bicycles to get the chocolates delivered to their final destination.
Tragically, Mott Green passed away way too early in 2013 due to an electrocution accident when he was working on the factory’s solar power system. The Grenada Chocolate Company is still carrying on the legacy he created.
Originally posted on 2021-12-20, part of the daily planting journal behind Ha’a Chocolate’s food forest on Hawai’i Island.