What is Cacao?
Cacao in its simplest form commonly thought of as the cacao bean. And that isn’t entirely correct! The cacao fruit is a pod (see picture above), within which the cacao bean lives a plush little life surrounded by sweet pulp. A cacao pod is quite large (15 - 30 centimeters) and contains somewhere between 30 and 50 cacao beans per pod.
The cacao tree can live for more than 200 years, although it only produces high-quality cacao beans during its first 25 - 30 years. A typical tree can grow to around 12 meters, and will generate around 20 cacao pods that grow directly on the trunk of the tree.
- It takes around 1.200 cacao beans to make 1 kg of cacao paste.
- Almost all cacao trees in the world grow within 20 degrees of the equator, with the vast majority within 7 degrees of the equator.