We grow cocoa for chocolate

Does chocolate grow on trees?

Yes! It begins with a tree Chocolate comes from the inside of a cocoa bean.

Cocoa beans grow inside pods on cocoa trees

The story of chocolate is a story like many other foods. It takes many different people doing different jobs. From cocoa beans to your place

Here is a cocoa tree nursery in Papua New Guinea. Shhhhhh – baby chocolate trees are growing!

The baby cocoa trees need looking after. What do they need?

Fiona is by a net which stops coconuts from falling on the young cocoa trees.

Cocoa pods After a few years the trees grow big cocoa bean pods. These are nearly ripe for picking.

When the bean pods get picked they will go to the fermentary. The beans are covered in a sticky white goo. They need to ferment for about a week until the beans are no longer bitter.

The beans go on a boat trip After the wet beans are dried they get put into bags. The cocoa beans then go on a boat and travel to the mainland about 700km away.

Planting and growing cocoa was a lot of work. The farmer has a family to look after.

How much is a bag of beans? The farmer will get paid NZ$300 for a 100kg bag of beans. It’s important he gets paid a fair price. Why is that?

The bags of cocoa get sent across the sea. They end up at a chocolate factory.

There are chocolate factories in PNG. Do we make chocolate in New Zealand? Who do the NZ chocolate factories buy their cocoa from?

Fair pay, fair price What can you find out about fair trade chocolate? Next time you buy cocoa or chocolate, check out the label. Where did it come from? Did the farmers get paid a fair price?

Would you like to help Jerolyn?

The families on Kapo Island need another 35,000 cocoa seedlings.

The families on Kapo Island need a strong boat to take their cocoa beans to the city. A canoe won’t do!

Can you raise some money to help? Any ideas? We would love to be able to help them. But we need you to help us.

Acknowledgements Thanks to the families on Kapo Island, Papua New Guinea for allowing us to spend time with them so we could tell this story. Thank you to Fr Edward Mali, Diocese of Kimbe & Matthias Ire, Caritas Papua New Guinea – Diocese of Kimbe. Photos by Fr Philip Gibbs Visit September 2012.

2013