SUDDENLY organic chocolate is everywhere. And if you think we’ve got a good selection here, you should see what they have in the United Kingdom. But what’s so good about organic chocolate?

The monoculture setup of conventional chocolate plantations encourages the spread of disease. As with coffee plantations, clearing away swaths of rainforest to grow cacao trees kills off the naturally occurring organisms that fight off pests, fungi, and diseases (which forces the farmers to use chemical pesticides and fungicides in their place). This means that if a disease manages to get a toehold, it has the potential to devastate the entire plantation, which is exactly what happened in South America in the 1990s, when a virulent fungus wiped out whole plantations of cacao trees and the incomes of workers who labored on the plantations.

The way organic chocolate is grown presents a more diversified ecosystem, less prone to epidemics of pathogenic organisms. Jupara, a local nongovernmental organization in Bahia, Brazil, taught the landless workers how to grow cacao in its natural habitat of lowland rainforest, under the canopy of taller trees, using organic techniques. This helps preserve the native canopy trees as well as the livelihood of the workers. The midges—small gnat-like insects—that pollinate cacao require the humid shade of the rainforest with a wide range of plant species and decaying matter on the ground. These insects have no reason to leave their natural habitat and venture into the sunny, dry, cultivated groves of conventional cacao. That’s why big cacao plantations have a very low rate of pollination of the tree’s flowers. Grown organically in its natural habitat, the pollination rates are much higher. This means more pods per tree, and therefore fewer trees—and environmental disruption—needed for the same amount of cocoa bean crop.

Naturally grown cacao has over 400 distinct smells (compared to fourteen in roses and seven in onions). Cultivated conventional cacao has only a small percentage of those smells, making it even harder for the pollinating midges to find the flowers. So, what’s so great about organic chocolate? Richer flavor expression from beans, and cacao trees grown in ways that protect, not threaten, the fragile tropical ecosystem.

After learning how to enrich the soil naturally and use other nature-friendly practices, the farmers—who now call themselves “agroecologists”—sell their cacao to green markets around the world. The organic cacao, certified by the Brazilian Instituto Biodinamico de Desenvolvimento, brings a price 40 percent higher than conventional chocolate. This kind of success is being repeated in the Caribbean, Central America, and other parts of South America where cacao is grown. On the Caribbean island of Grenada, for example, the Grenada Chocolate Company gained organic certification in 2004. The cacao is grown in the island’s tropical rainforest and the chocolate is roasted and ground on site in a solar energy-powered facility.

Once this organic cocoa gets to the manufacturers, it is turned into what we think of as chocolate through a process known as conching—a constant sloshing and stirring that triggers an oxidation process that reduces the natural bitterness of cacao beans. Many conventional chocolate manufacturers conch for 3 or 4 hours. The highest quality chocolate makers, by contrast, will conch their chocolate for up to 72 hours, producing an extra silky texture and premium flavor. Instead of white sugar, organic producers will often use organic whole cane sugar, which layers in another subtle flavor of cane syrup.

Soy lecithin is used in conventional chocolate making as an emulsifier, and much soy lecithin comes from genetically modified soybeans. But none of that can be used in organic chocolate. Where soy lecithin is used as an emulsifier in organic chocolate, it must come from soybeans that have not been genetically modified. And organic cocoa isn’t treated with potassium carbonate to alkalize it, as is done in the manufacture of Dutch-processed chocolate. The alkalizing makes the chocolate easier to dissolve in liquids, but it does nothing for the flavor.  ....read more