Belize’s Cacao Industry
- Posted by Frantz Smith
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A pleasant Sunday morning to all you friends and family. I was in the south last Friday and stopped off to buy some original organic Belize chocolate from Mr. Julio Saqui in Maya Center Village. This chocolate is great. The flavor is exceptional.
Here is a snippet of the Cacao Industry section in my book, Belize Facts and Figures. Hopefull this book will be out by January or February 2016:
Belize has had experience in the global cacao supply chain since the 1950s. The price crashed in 1991, but by 1994 Green and Blacks launched Maya Gold chocolate bars in the United Kingdom Fairtrade market. This was the world’s first organic certified chocolate bar and was made from organic cacao supplied by farmers of the Toledo Cacao Growers Association (TCGA).
The cacao grown in Belize is a combination of Criollo and hybrid plants with the latter making up the majority of the acreage. These are grown principally in the Toledo District. The harvest season is between November and June. In 2012, just under BZ$400,000 worth of cacao was exported. Countries that import Belize cacao include Switzerland, the Netherlands and the USA.