From the Fire Hearth: 2018 Chocolate Fest in Toledo Reveals Concerns for Local Chocolate Economy

The cacao industry has provided a boost to Toledo, the economically poorest district in Belize. Concerns rise as more foreigner-owned companies are buying land in Toledo to harvest, and Maya farmers see less ownership opportunities

Our intrepid editor here at the Breeze has asked me for a chocolate report from the Deep South aka Toledo. Last month we celebrated the 11th Chocolate Festival of Belize. The festival took place May 18-20 in Toledo District, our southernmost district and the heart of the cacao cultivating industry.

Since 1984 the modern industry has taken off, especially when the Toledo Cacao Growers Association began working with Green and Blacks Chocolate in 1992, catapulting Belizean cacao beans into the international spotlight as the key ingredient in the world’s first certified organic, certified fair trade chocolate bar. Thanks to this ground breaking collaboration Belizean cacao beans have become famous worldwide for their high quality and fruit forward, complex flavor profile. Reflective of this transformation, the original Toledo Cacao Fest has morphed into the more cosmopolitan sounding Chocolate Festival of Belize.

Typically, the festival begins with a Friday night Wine and Chocolate evening with many chocolate companies offering free samples and free wine with the purchase of an entrance ticket. This year, this event was moved to Saturday night, and Friday night began with a musical bashment at the Punta Gorda Civic Center instead. On Saturday, Front Street in Punta Gorda town was closed to traffic as the famous Taste of Toledo street fair took place. (At the fair and at the Chocolate and Wine Night, I helped out our friends from San Felipe Village at the Ixcacao Maya Belizean Chocolate booth.) Locals and visitors enjoyed stalls showcasing cacao and chocolate products from edible treats to cosmetics. Of course, the street was lined with food vendors and the requisite cell phone and truck promo stands. Sunday the action moved to the beautiful Nim Li Punit Maya archaeological site for the last day of events, including chocolate grinding competitions and Maya cultural performances. I was not able to attend this event, as I was recovering from a somewhat strenuous hike to Victoria Peak the week prior.

Moving the Wine and Chocolate night to Saturday night was the biggest change for the Chocolate Festival this year; in theory, this should have made it easier for more people to attend, but it seemed to have had the opposite effect. There were simply not as many people as in earlier years, despite the presence of delicious chocolate samples, wine and a wonderful performance by the Panerrifix Steel Pan Orchestra. That said, it did please me to see some attendees visiting from as far north as Orange Walk.

In years past, all the main chocolate companies of Belize have been found at the Chocolate and Wine night offering up samples, but not this year. Conspicuously absent were almost all immigrants or foreigner-owned chocolatiers, as well as Belizean-owned Ajaw and Cheil Chocolate companies. Belize Chocolate Company, Moho River Chocolate, Goss Chocolate and even CottonTree Chocolate, whose factory is located in downtown Punta Gorda, did not participate in the Chocolate and Wine night. All but Cotton Tree were also missing at the Punta Gorda Front Street fair. Also not present was the American-owned cacao broker, Maya Mountain Cacao, who in years past always had a stall at these events. A delicious exception to this unusual pattern for the evening; however, was Copal Tree Lodge (formerly Bel Campo) whose staff offered chocolates filled with their own house-distilled rum, as well as vegetarian and pulled chicken tacos.

At the same time as these companies who typically participate in the event chose to stay away this year, some new arrivals from Toledo were happy to be part of the festivities. The famous Eladio Pop of San Pedro Columbia Village offered up chocolate samples from his Agouti Cacao Farm, and so did new small-scale chocolate makers from San Miguel and Middlesex Villages. It was positive to see more chocolate companies starting up here in the south, an area that has been the heart of Belize’s cacao and chocolate industry since the days of the Maya city states over a thousand years ago.

The changes in who participated at this year’s chocolate festival reflect changes in the industry on a whole. Looking at Belize’s chocolate and cacao growing industries today, there is a shift from small Belizean Maya-owned and operated farms working collaboratively through the Toledo Cacao Growers Association (TCGA – a Fair Trade and Organic certified famers cooperative) to new larger scale, often foreign-owned or controlled, private sector interests – many of whom have little or no interest in organic or fair trade practices. Since last year the Toledo Cacao Growers Association has collapsed and while rumors circulate that it will be re-formed, its old glory days seem to be a thing of the past. Maya Mountain Cacao, who replaced the farmers’ cooperative as the main purchaser and exporter of Belizean cacao, has had its own import and export issues that prevented it from operating at full capacity for a few months. Copal Tree Lodge cultivates over 400 acres of its own cacao using organic methods and sells its beans directly to the American-owned Vosges Chocolate. New foreign-controlled interests such as Mahogany Chocolate have purchased cacao lands in Toledo and have brought in foreign chefs and chocolate makers directly tied to large scale tourism investments on Ambergris Caye. This group was also absent from the Chocolate Festival of Belize.

This shift away from small and medium growers, Belizean-owned farms, and in some cases, organic and fair trade production, may have profound implications for the future of Belizean cacao. The oldest chocolate companies in Belize, Goss Chocolate located right here on the Placencia Peninsula and Ixcacao Chocolate, Belize’s oldest Belizean Maya-owned chocolatier, remain committed to sourcing and using organically cultivated cacao beans, but since the collapse of TCGA and the lack of a Belizean Organic Standards certifying body to replace the foreign certifiers that TCGA employed, Belizean cacao farmers currently have few options for obtaining official organic certification, even if they continue to cultivate using organic methods. It would do new investors well to remember that one of the reasons that Belizean cacao beans and chocolate products are so famous is because of the incredibly high quality and complex flavor of our beans. This flavor comes about thanks to careful, organic, cultivation of our precious cacao trees. Using commercial fertilizers and copper sulfate fungicides instead of holistic shadebased farming systems reduces the quality of our famous beans. If our quality drops, our market will be affected as Belizean beans are famous for flavor not for quantity of production.

Similarly, it is my opinion that the buying up of formerly Belizean-owned cacao farms in Maya communities and the disappearance of the cacao farmers’ cooperative in Belize does not bode well for the use of cacao farming and small scale value added processing to economicallyempower small rural communities across southern Belize. Without organized farmer representation at the table, the risk is high that the owners of small Belizean cacao farms will be marginalized as larger local and foreign interests increasingly dominate and control the Belizean cacao and chocolate industries. Some Belizean actors are attempting to forge their own paths by allying themselves with the new private sector investors, but it remains to be seen whether all these investors are deeply committed to stimulating and growing the Belizean economy and Belizean cacao farmers. I remain convinced that to keep our industry sustainable and viable we need a strong core of organically cultivated, Belizean-owned small and medium farms that supply cacao to a growing body of Belizean-owned chocolate and cacao products businesses. In this way, the majority of the profit from our delicious cacao stays in the hands of small Belizean businesses, where it will do the most to stimulate our national economy. In the words of one Belizean chocolate maker, “our goal as an industry should not be to export cacao beans, but instead to grow our chocolate and cacao products industry to the point that all of our fine flavor, high quality beans are turned in high value products right here in Belize.” In a world where over 75% of the planet’s cacao beans are exported from the tropical producing countries to first world countries for processing, this is a radical, even revolutionary, goal, and one well worth pursuing. To that end, let us all support businesses that are committed to this goal. We need businesses that promote in-country, small-scale-value-added processing of our delicious cacao that are either Belizean owned or at least keep their bank accounts here and re-invest their profits in Belize and that want to see Belize’s southernmost districts, economically the poorest in the country, thrive thanks to our world class cacao. ▪

Editor’s Note: This was an opinion piece by Dr. Lyra Spang. She is the owner/guide of Taste Belize Tours, a unique cultural & culinary tour company offering award winning chocolate tours. She writes about food whenever she can. Reach her at tastebelize@gmail.com.