Boge Chocolate Company, Inc.

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The love of chocolate began about 4,000 years ago in Mesoamerican in what is today known as southern Mexico and Central America.

The people of that time known as Olmecs, unlocked the secret of how to eat this bitter, wild seed and launched an enduring phenomenon. Cacao beans were so valuable to early Mesoamericans that they were used as currency.

 

Chocolate Grows on Trees

The treat so loved worldwide has humble beginnings. The cacao bean begins life inside a fruit, called a pod, on a tree in the tropics, primarily in remote areas of West Africa, Southeast Asia and Central and South America.

These delicate, flower-covered trees need much tending. When farmed using sustainable methods they grow in harmony in tropical forests beneath other cash crops such as bananas, rubber or hardwood trees. Grown on small family farms, the beans are taken from cocoa farms by hand, in carts, on donkeys or rugged trucks to be sold to a local buyer and then to processors abroad.

Once in the factory, they are ground, pressed, heated and stirred to create luxurious chocolate.

 

The Cacao Farm Families

Chocolate figures into the lives of people worldwide, in various ways.

For people who live in cocoa farming communities, chocolate influences the tasks they do every day and provides a key source of income to feed their families.

Today’s cocoa is still raised by hand, not by machine, through labor-intensive processes. Because the delicate cacao tree needs a narrow range of growing conditions and careful tending to thrive, large-scale cocoa production is not common.

The world's cocoa supply is grown by 5 million to 6 million farmers, according to the World Cocoa Foundation and mainly comes from small family-owned farms.

On these farms, the whole family works together with varying roles to plant seedlings, clear or thin the forest canopy, prune and watch over the cacao trees, harvest and crack the pods, ferment and dry the beans, and carry the bags of beans—on their backs or on their heads—to the buying sheds, which may be far away.

At the sheds, cocoa merchants grade and weigh the beans, ready them to be shipped overseas and pay the farmer—providing an important source of income for the entire family.

Chocolate from the Countries
Venezuela (72%)
Madagascar (33%)
Peru (63%)
Dominican Republic (64%)
Haiti (65%)