Cocoa And Chocolate
The Tree, The Bean The Beverage

10 THE COCOA AND CHOCOLATE INDUSTRY as beans. On examining the seeds after the pulp has been removed, one finds that in the Criollo variety the seeds are large, plump and white, or almost white in colour ; whilst the Forastero beans are smaller, flatter, and heliotrope in colour (the Calabacillo sub-variety being the smallest and most deeply coloured). The simplest and most satisfactory Classification for com-mercial purposes is by means of the colour of the seeds. If they are white they are Criollo, and if they are heliotrope or purple they are Forastero. The weight of pulp-covered seeds from a pod varies naturally with the size of the pod, the type of cacao and the amount of pulp ; it may be taken as being roughly one-quarter of the weight of the pod. Thus a pod weighing 1 1b. con-tains on the average about 4 ozs. of pulp-covered seeds which would yield about 11 ozs. of the dry, cured cacao-beans of commerce. This impresses one as a small amount, but the weight of cacao yielded by the tree is even more surprising. On a first-class property the average yield of the tree may reach as a maximum, 3 Ibs. a year. Taking all the cacao trees in the world, it is doubtful if the average yield of commercial cacao exceeds 1| Ibs. to 2 Ibs. to the tree per annum. This faet may well stagger the economist and cause the would-be planter to pause. The reader will wonder how the planter makes the cultivation of cacao pay, and may inquire how vast a multitude of people are ernpfoyed to look after the 500,000,000 cacao trees required to produce the crop. An attempt will be made to answer these questions in a later chapter.