The killing Elephant The dead owner lay right in front of our small cacao farm in Sre Ampom, in the hills of Mondulkiri, Cambodia. He should have known better. His male elephant had already been unpredictable, restless and aggressive for the past week. The bull was in what they call a ‘musth’, a natural phenomenon …
Recession or Depression? Most of us remember the recent recessions: the Asian financial crisis of 1997/1998, the recession caused by the dot.com bubble in 2001, and the house market crash of 2007/2008. There was always a great panic, economies stagnated, doom scenarios dominated the political landscape, but most economies bounced back after a short period. …
3 WAYS FOR A CHOCOLATE MAKER TO SURVIVE AN ECONOMIC DOWNTURN Read More »
Mexican manuscript banned As a cardinal in the Pope’s court, Ferdinando de Medici discovered a 12-volume manuscript consisting of 2,400 pages with more than 2,000 illustrations, which had recently been sent to Rome from Madrid. The magisterial work had been commissioned by the Catholic Church to Bernardino de Sahagún, a Franciscan brother and three of …
ONE TOMATO FOR ONE COCOA BEAN. A HISTORY OF THE VALUE OF CACAO Read More »
The Portuguese capuchin monk António da Madalena pulled with a firm yank the cord of his brown robe that had got caught behind a thick branch. Sweat poured from his forehead, but he kept going. He wanted to know if the stories of the locals were true. Through the thick vegetation of the Cambodian jungle, …
As a cacao farmer in Cambodia from Dutch origin, I developed a deep interest in the roots of Asian cacao, even more because the Dutch played such an incredibly important role in the success of cacao in Asia; a role that has actually remained totally underexposed. In an earlier article, I described the existence of …
There could be a breakthrough for the average Chinese acceptance of chocolate as a daily consumable item.
Thailand has never been a major grower of cacao. It produced a decent 1,400 metric tonnes. But over the past twenty years, cacao production has been in a downward spiral. One of the reasons was the closure of the Barry Callebaut cacao grinder in 2016 due to extremely high import taxes on cacao.
In 1944, Benjamin H. Kean was a 32-year-old army surgeon stationed in the Panama Canal Zone by the US army. Later he would play a disputed role in the Iran hostage crisis as physician to the exiled Shah. But in WWII he was an unknown doctor who, one quiet day decided to visit the islands of …
How did Cacao come to be in Asia? The Dutch, famous for trading had a big part to play in this story.
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