Harvesting is done by hand ... DAN O’DOHERTY photo CEO and founder Dr. Gunars Valkirs harvests a cacao pod by hand. -- NAINOA MOORE photo Cacao flowers are delicate and beautiful along ...

Harvesting cacao fruit requires lots of experience as pods, whether on the same tree or between varieties, mature at ...

The crop — the raw, unprocessed form of cocoa beans — has two primary harvest periods in Western ... it takes about five to six months for the pods to mature. Once ripe, the pods are harvested ...

The difficulty of harvesting cacao pods from the rain forest and processing the seeds into the paste that was the basis for the chocolate, and its stimulating effect, elevated the drink to the ...

Volunteers separate seeds and pulp from halved cacao pods during Friday’s harvest at Maui Ku’ia Estate Chocolate’s Lahaina farm. The workers are sitting next to next to piles of just ...

Across West Africa’s cocoa heartland, Eddie Arthur has spent a quarter of a century traveling from farm to farm each day to stare at trees and count how many pods they have. At every stop, he records ...

(Bloomberg) -- Top cocoa grower Ivory Coast ... uncertainty for the mid-crop because harvesting is likely to be delayed by roughly a month to give pods more time to mature and ripen.