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Dole Food Co. turns
former sugar acreage
into stands of cacao
It seems only proper that out of land that once yielded sugar cane, something else with sweet intentions should grow.
From cacao to candy
You have to wonder how anyone figured out that you could make something as fabulous as chocolate out of cacao in its original form. The process being followed in Waialua:
Reaching the beans: Cacao pods are cut open and the beans, encased in a slimy white membrane, are pulled out.
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Cacao is growing with gusto on former sugar land in Waialua -- the pods like mini-footballs in all the colors of a sunset.
A half-dozen Dole Food Co. workers are busy harvesting the pods, removing the beans and drying them. Dole expects a yield of 8,000 to 10,000 pounds of dried beans this year, to be sent to San Francisco for processing. Most will be turned into dark, bittersweet chocolate candy, says Michael Conway, manager of coffee and cacao operations for Dole, and it could be in the Dole Plantation gift shop by late summer.
About 20 acres of cacao were planted in 1996, just after Waialua Sugar Mill shut down. It was part of Dole's major plunge into diversified agriculture that involved planting 1,800 acres in crops from tropical flowers to coffee.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer David Murdock was especially interested in cacao, Conway says. But little was known about what type would grow best in Waialua's climate. "We literally just grabbed seed from different varieties and stuck it in the ground."
The Dole cacao fields, he says, are "a genetic pool of stuff."
After three years, the trees started producing, just in time for a shift in management philosophy away from most of the new crops. "We walked away from it," Conway says.
The trees were abandoned for several years, weeds took over and Conway and his staff went on to other projects. Then, about 18 months ago, came another shift in management thinking and Conway was sent in to see what could be salvaged in a field that had become a choked mass of guinea grass 13 feet high.
Michael Conway, manager of coffee and cacao operations for Dole Food Co., checks the cacao trees.
Cacao beans start out looking like shiny white garlic cloves. After fermentation, they resemble wrinkly brown almonds.
Within months they were bearing fruit again.
An initial shipment of 150 pounds of dried beans was sent to San Francisco in March for processing at the Guittard Chocolate Co. factory. This resulted in a test batch of just a couple pounds of candy returned to Hawaii.
And the taste? "I would say ours is in the high end of being a premium, very fine chocolate," says Conway, who has been doing a lot of comparative tasting recently.
His opinion is backed by the Guittard chocolatiers, who placed it in the range of a fine South American chocolate.
By early next year, Conway expects to have enough pure Hawaiian Waialua chocolate for the masses, most likely selling at a premium price in gift shops.
Some experimentation and fine-tuning are still necessary, particularly in the area of fermenting the beans, which develops the chocolate flavor potential. But thus far, Conway is quite enamored of his cacao and its prospects in sea-level Waialua.
The soil is good, and the area draws less wind and rain than most places on the Big Island, where Hawaii's cacao crop has centered so far. Cacao is sensitive to both those elements.
"I'm absolutely convinced that Waialua is the best place in the state for growing this," he says.
The area is a bit sunny for cacao, but Conway gets around that by planting other trees that act as both windbreaks and shade.
Cacao trees produce year-round, requiring six months to turn a flower into a ripened fruit.
And they grow virtually unbothered by pests, of either insect or human variety. Thieves, a devastating problem for island farmers, can't do much with cacao, Conway says. "What are you going to do if you steal a cacao except sell it back to me?"
The goal is a prestige crop, to be developed in tandem with a revival of Waialua coffee. Dole's coffee was launched with high hopes several years ago, only to falter in bankruptcy. "We got successful at growing," Conway says. "We weren't too good at marketing."
Lessons were learned, though, and optimism has returned. "We really believe cacao can go the direction of Kona coffee."
The state’s cacao industry
explores options for growth
Chocolate is not just a food; it is romance, mystique and passion. The emotional aspects of cacao -- from which chocolate is derived -- were pronounced last week at the 2005 Hawaii Cacao Symposium in Kona.
More than 50 people attended the two-day program at the Sheraton-Keauhou Bay Resort that brought together scientists, farmers, manufacturers, confectioners and others in the world of chocolate.
The symposium was organized and sponsored by Pam Williams, professional chocolatier and head of Ecole Chocolate School of Professional Chocolate Arts in Vancouver, B.C., a former resident and frequent visitor to Hawaii. "The cacao industry in Hawaii is at a crossroads; it has grown and stumbled for over 20 years," Williams said. "Hopefully, this meeting will get it going."
Speakers focused on various issues facing the fledgling industry, which has had its fits and starts.
First introduced to Hawaii in 1850, cacao plantings were modest until 1986, when Jim Walsh, under the Hawaiian Vintage Chocolate name, planted thousands of trees in Keeau on the Big Island and Lahaina, Maui. Processing of the cacao into chocolate was done on the mainland, but false claims as to the Hawaiian purity of the final product led to the demise of the brand.
Hawaii Gold Cacao Tree, founded by Richard Oszustowicz, announced plans for a bigger effort in 2003, but there has been no activity to date.
In 2000, Bob and Pam Cooper produced an all-Hawaii-grown chocolate bar from their home/factory in Kona. The Original Hawaiian Chocolate Factory is still the only chocolate manufacturing facility in the islands, processing about 6,000 pounds of beans a year.
The Coopers grow some cacao, but also buy cacao beans from farmers throughout the state. If there were more beans to process, the Coopers say, they could handle more, with some adjustments to their plant.
"We won't turn a grower away," Bob Cooper said. "And we intend to keep it pure and select, like Kona coffee. "
Keynote speaker was Gary Guittard, president and CEO of the family-owned Guittard Chocolate Co. in California, founded in 1868. "Hawaii has to decide whether to plant a diverse variety of cacao types or a single genetic model, tackle the fermentation and drying issue, and decide whether Hilo or Kona will be the best location, " said Guittard, whose company regularly buys beans from small producers in the cacao-growing regions of Africa, South America and Asia.
As a small but respected artisanal chocolate manufacturer, Guittard sees a market for Hawaii chocolate within the islands. "We have many customers here," he explained, "and if we were to get involved we would focus on selling chocolate to candy makers and pastry chefs right here."
H.C. "Skip" Bittenbender, extension specialist at the University of Hawaii's College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, posed the economic question: "Do we sell a raw agricultural product (dry beans), using the cachet of a Hawaii name, or do we build an industry that is vertically integrated from farm to finished product? "
The average price for dried beans on the world market is 67 cents a pound, although the Coopers pay $1.60 per pound. "A farmer won't be able to make a living selling beans, but it could provide supplemental income for a multiple-income farm family, " Bittenbender said.
Symposium attendees also experienced chocolate firsthand. More than a dozen varieties from various parts of the world and different manufacturers were sampled, all exhibiting different flavor characteristics and textures.
"Flavor must be a part of selection, " said Ed Seguine, vice president of research and development for Guittard. "Some genotypes are the same no matter where you plant; others will taste different in different environments. Fermentation time and number of turns, mechanical or sun-drying, all affect flavor. "
Forastero, a robust, disease-resistant and very productive variety, represents 85 percent of the world crop. It has a true chocolate flavor with bitter and astringent notes. The Criolo variety produces a lighter bean with lower chocolate flavor but a unique sugar note. Trinitario is a cross of the two varieties and exhibits a greater diversity of flavor.
"It's not what the variety is, but how you handle it that makes the flavor," Seguine said, pointing to post-harvest handling and processing as key.
"Cheap bulk chocolate can be done by anyone. The true artisan grower understands each tree, how and when to pick the pods, the weather conditions during the maturation cycle and uses all the information for ideal fermentation. The master has to taste the pulp and bean."
Chocolatiers also contributed samples and points of view. Fran Bigelow of Fran's Chocolates in Seattle, Michael Recchiuti of Recchiuti Confections in San Francisco and Cathy Barrett of the Kailua Candy Co. in Kona discussed the flavor factors that determine their choice of chocolate and their creation of confections for retail sales.
Cacao interest and optimism is high, especially on the Big island, where many farmers have plantings and more are considering it as an alternative to coffee, macadamia nuts and other long-standing crops.
A Cacao Industry Chapter within the Hawaii Tropical Fruit Growers Association was organized in May, with 24 members representing 13 farms. Gini Choobua heads the group, which has begun collecting data on the scope of the industry, identifying farmers, varieties, acreage, number of trees, yields and practices. The group hopes to focus on education for growers, users and consumers of chocolate, research on genetics, orchard health and economic options.
"The cacao industry needs to look at the coffee model," said Mike Conway, manager of coffee and cacao operations for Dole Food Co., which is growing cacao on Oahu on former sugar land in Waialua.
"In the Coffee Growers' Association, there was a sharing of information. There's strength in unity and it will help build the industry."
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