The Aztecs were the first to use choco­late and they con­sid­ered it a food fit on­ly for the gods.

Choco­late, one of the world’s favourite flavours and pos­si­bly the most loved taste across sev­en con­ti­nents, has been con­sumed by hu­mans from as far back as 1900 BC. It was an in­te­gral part of the Aztec and Mayan civil­i­sa­tions and cul­ture.

It has al­so been an in­te­gral part of lo­cal his­to­ry, as T&T once had a suc­cess­ful co­coa in­dus­try. Faced with nu­mer­ous chal­lenges how­ev­er, an­nu­al pro­duc­tion plum­met­ed from 30,000 tonnes of beans a cen­tu­ry ago to just 500 tonnes in re­cent decades. Sta­tis­tic from 2017 showed that 81 tons of T&T’s co­coa beans were ex­port­ed to Japan, down from 156 tonnes in 2011.

How­ev­er, the in­dus­try is be­ing re­vived, through the pas­sion­ate ef­forts of the op­er­a­tors of the Green Mar­ket at San­ta Cruz.

Last Sat­ur­day, the Green Mar­ket cel­e­brat­ed In­ter­na­tion­al Choco­late Day for the fifth con­sec­u­tive year. There was a vast ar­ray of prod­ucts on dis­play, in­clud­ing choco­late samosas with co­conut sauce, choco­late crepes and liqueurs, as well as soaps, lo­tions and ar­ti­sanal crafts.

The event fo­cused, not on­ly on the im­por­tance of co­coa and its byprod­ucts, but the need to en­sure the con­tin­ued sur­vival of the lo­cal co­coa in­dus­try.

“We are re­al­ly en­cour­aged by the re­fine­ment of the choco­latiers and the new en­trants but of course we want to em­pha­sise the need for sus­tain­able ca­cao grow­ing in Trinidad, which is the ba­sis for re­al in­dus­tri­al di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion,” Vic­ki As­severo, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Green Mar­ket, ex­plained.

The mar­ket has been in­stru­men­tal in fos­ter­ing growth of small busi­ness­es and co­coa in­ter­est has peaked, re­sult­ing in new, unique prod­ucts be­ing in­tro­duced every year.

“It’s clear there are many new in­ter­ests in­to choco­late-mak­ing. Over the past cou­ple of years there have def­i­nite­ly been more ven­dors com­ing to pro­duce co­coa items. We had some re­al­ly won­der­ful co­coa soaps, face masks and lo­tions.

“In terms of foods, there was the choco­late samosa which I don’t think peo­ple would have had be­fore. And we al­so had savoury choco­late sauces,” As­severo ex­plained.

On the craft side, there were dis­plays of jew­el­ry in­spired by co­coa, in­clud­ing ear­rings.

“The fes­ti­val tries to high­light this crop which is pro­duced lo­cal­ly and what can be done with it. From all of that in­spi­ra­tion there was co­coa pod fab­rics al­so,”she added.

Not­ing the lack of sta­tis­tics on ac­tu­al co­coa pro­duc­tion in T&T, As­severo said: “I don’t know how many peo­ple are ac­tu­al­ly get­ting in­to grow­ing the co­coa. What I would like to have stressed is pro­duc­ing the raw ma­te­r­i­al that helps all the en­tre­pre­neurs along the chain to sur­vive but if you don’t have the ba­sic raw ma­te­r­i­al then it’s hard for peo­ple to make co­coa prod­ucts.

“That’s the point we like to stress at the Green Mar­ket so that peo­ple can have an idea of the va­ri­ety of things, not just food that can come from some of the crops that we pro­duce.

In­ter­na­tion­al Choco­late Day is one of the Green Mar­ket’s most pop­u­lar events, at­tract­ing large num­bers of vis­i­tors. One of this year’s high­lights was an ed­u­ca­tion­al seg­ment by Christo­pher Paul, pres­i­dent of the Montser­rat Co­coa Farm­ers Co-op­er­a­tive.

Echo­ing some of As­severo’s views on the po­ten­tial of co­coa, Paul said T&T and some oth­er Caribbean is­lands pro­duce main­ly fine-flavoured co­coa which has flo­ral, fruity and woody notes.

“Fine flavour is in high de­mand as it’s used for blend­ing the bulk co­coa which ob­vi­ous­ly do not pos­sess these qual­i­ties,” he said.

“The fine-flavoured co­coa is much more ex­pen­sive than the bulk co­coa. Around 1925 we were the fourth largest pro­duc­er of choco­late do­ing around 34,000 tonnes. Cur­rent­ly it’s 400-500 tonnes a year.”

Some of the best co­coa in the world comes from T&T, and Trini­tario is one of the three va­ri­eties of co­coa in­dige­nous to this coun­try. The oth­ers are criol­lo, which is al­so fine flavour, and the low­er-grade foras­tero—Trini­tario co­coa is ac­tu­al­ly an in­ter­breed­ing of these two va­ri­eties).

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T&T sup­plies the co­coa for the renowned Gran Cou­va choco­late bar made by the French choco­latiers Val­rhona.

“Who’s not in­to it should get in­to it,” Paul said.

“Re­vi­talise the aban­doned es­tates and this will en­able the farm­ers to get a bet­ter price. When we start­ed our co-op­er­a­tive in 2010 we were pay­ing $4.65 for a kilo­gramme of wet co­coa beans. We now pay $10 be­cause we were able to cut out the mid­dle­men—the fer­men­tary op­er­a­tors, the bro­kers and we as a co-op­er­a­tive deal di­rect­ly with choco­latiers. By do­ing that we were able to get the farm­ers a bet­ter price.”

The co-op­er­a­tive, which com­pris­es 46 mem­bers, sup­plies the co­coa beans which are then dried, fer­ment­ed and stored.

“The lo­cal co­coa in­dus­try is def­i­nite­ly grow­ing. More peo­ple are be­com­ing aware and get­ting ex­cit­ed to be in­volved in it,” Paul said.

Sweet busi­ness

Ameera Mo­hammed-Ali, who took part in the fes­ti­val for the third year, said the mar­ket has as­sist­ed her tremen­dous­ly in grow­ing her cus­tomer base.

This year, her busi­ness—Svadisa Cre­ations— which has been in ex­is­tence for some three and a half years and is joint­ly-owned by her hus­band Za­yaad—of­fered choco­late samosas which proved to be a big hit.

“The cre­ativ­i­ty of the items that ven­dors c0me up with draws more and more cus­tomers. This event has done won­ders for our busi­ness as op­posed to ad­ver­tis­ing. It’s much bet­ter to go out there and let cus­tomers taste the food. Most of our cus­tomers come from the Green Mar­ket and the Up Mar­kets and be­cause of that we are con­stant­ly meet­ing new cus­tomers,” Mo­hammed-Ali said.

The choco­late and co­conut samosas, serve with caramel and a dark choco­late sauce, cost $8 each.

“The idea for the choco­late samosa came from in­spi­ra­tion for the Choco­late Day. We like to put our cre­ations out there,” Mo­hammed-Ali said.

All the prod­ucts were made from lo­cal­ly sourced items.

The var­i­ous lo­cal mar­kets, Mo­hammed-Ali ex­plained, are a great source of net­work­ing, help­ing ven­dors source lo­cal raw ma­te­r­i­al.

“These mar­kets have dif­fer­ent choco­late ven­dors who, in turn, help us in get­ting what we need, for ex­am­ple the co­coa pow­der. I pre­fer to use lo­cal prod­ucts be­cause it’s im­por­tant to help the lo­cal farm­ers and that’s im­por­tant for the co­coa in­dus­try,” she said.