Cocoa plantation

“ A Guiana cocoa-plantation is an excellent investment. The first outlay is not heavy, nor is the maintenance of the plantation expensive — the number of labourers bearing an average proportion of one to nine to that of the acres under cultivation. The work required is of a kind that negroes, who are even now not unfrequently prejudiced by the memory of slave days against the cane-field and sugar-factory, undertake willingly enough; and to judge by their stout limbs and evident good condition, they find it not unsuited to their capabilities. ”

“ The principal cocoa-growing nations are in West Africa, while the genetic resources on which modern cocoa plantations depend for their continued productivity are found in the forests of western Amazonia.
49. Coffee growers and drinkers depend for the health of the crop on constant supplies of new genetic material from coffee's wild relatives, principally located in Ethiopia. Brazil, which supplies wild rubber germplasm to Southeast Asia's rubber plantation, itself depends on germplasm supplies from diverse parts of the world to sustain its sugar-cane, soybean, and other leading crops. ”

“ The Planter's Life.
Few who go to the tropics escape their fascination, and of those that are young, few return to colder climes. Some become overseers, others, more fortunate, own the estates they manage. It is inadvisable for the inexperienced to start on the enterprise of buying and planting an estate with less capital than two or three thousand pounds; but, once established, a cacao plantation may be looked upon as a permanent investment, which will continue to bear and give a good yield as long as it receives proper attention. ”

“ Some Trinidad planters believe that their trees would die without shade, yet in Grenada, only a hundred miles North as the steamer sails, there are whole plantations without a single shade tree. The Grenadians say: "You cannot have pods without flowers, and you cannot have good flowering without light and air." Shade trees are not used on some estates in San Thomé, and in Brazil there are cocoa kings with 200,000 trees without one shade tree. It should be mentioned, however, that in these countries the cacao trees are planted more closely (about eight feet apart) and themselves shade the soil. ”

“ Sugar estates are generally marred by the prosaic factory in the background. They are dead level plains, and the giant grass affords no shade from the relentless sun. Whereas the leaves of the cacao tree are large and numerous, so that even in the heat of the day, it is comparatively cool and pleasant under the cacao.
Cacao plantations present in different countries every variety of appearance—from that of a wild forest in which the greater portion of the trees are cacao, to the tidy and orderly plantation. ”

“ In defence it is pointed out that yet another portion of the earth has been made productive, which, without the initiative of the European capitalist, must have lain fallow. But in the Gold Coast the "indolent" native has created a new industry entirely native owned, and in thirty years the Gold Coast has outstripped all the areas of the world in quantity of produce. Forty years ago the natives had never seen a cacao tree, now at least fifty million trees flourish in the colony. This could not have happened without the strenuous efforts of the Department of Agriculture. ”

“ The greater part of the world's cacao is produced without the use of artificial manures. The soil, which is continually washed down by the rains into the rivers, is continually renewed by decomposition of the bed rock, and in the tropics this decomposition is more rapid than in temperate climes. In Guayaquil, "notwithstanding the fact that the same soil has been cropped consecutively for over a hundred years, there is as yet no sign of decadence, nor does a necessity yet arise for artificial manure." ”

“ Or again, taking the average yield per acre as 400 lbs., we find that there must be well over a million acres under cacao cultivation. At the Government station at Aburi (Gold Coast) three plots of cacao gave in 1914 an average yield of over 8 pounds of cacao per tree, and in 1918 some 468 trees (Amelonado) gave as an average 7.8 pounds per tree. This suggests what might be done by thorough cultivation. It suggests a great opportunity for the planters—that, without planting one more tree, they might quadruple the world's production. ”

“ The trees come into bearing in about eight years after planting the seed, and will continue to produce crops for many years without any attention. Care will have to be given for the first few years, whilst the plants are small, to keep down undergrowth and to prevent fires from running through the plantation, but, once fairly established, the plants will look after themselves. A cocoa-nut plantation gives a distinctly tropical look to the district in which it is grown, and the palms, particularly when young, are very ornamental ”

“ In the coast region a mail steamer service was opened in 1912 along the lagoons between Porto Novo and Lagos.
Cocoa plantations were largely developed from 1912, and the coconut palm—for the copra trade—introduced in the lagoon districts, while in central Dahomey cotton plantations met with success. Maize is largely grown for export, and there are considerable herds of cattle in the north. But palm oil remains the chief source of wealth of the country ”

“ A soil of volcanic origin is covered with a rich humus of decaying vegetation, and this, with a soft humid atmosphere, makes an ideal home for cacao.
The bean, introduced in 1822, was not cultivated with diligence till fifty years ago. To-day the two islands, which together have not half the area of Surrey, grow 32,000 metric tons of cacao a year, or about one-tenth of the world's production. [6] The income of a single planter, once a poor peasant, has amounted to hundreds of thousands sterling. ”

“ In 1890 efforts were made by the establishment of a government botanical station at Aburi in the Accra district to induce the natives to improve their methods of cultivation and to enlarge the number of their crops. This resulted in the formation of hundreds of cocoa plantations, chiefly in the district immediately north of Accra. Subsequently the cultivation of the plant extended to every district of the colony. The industry had been founded in 1879 by a native of Accra, but it was not until 1901, as the result of the government’s fostering care, that the export became of importance. ”

“ After the seeds have dried for about two weeks they are nearly the color of red bricks. They are put up for shipment in canvas sacks holding one hundred and fifty pounds each. The name of the plantation is usually stamped upon the outside. Guayaquil exports more cocoa than any other city. Find it. A great deal comes from the island of Trinidad, and from the northern part of South America.
When the "beans" have reached their destination, they must be cleaned, to rid them of dust and dirt collected on the way. They are then placed in a great revolving cylinder and roasted. ”

“ The cultivation of the cocoa-nut is extremely simple; the only hard work is the first clearing of the ground, and keeping the young trees free from lianas. Once they are grown up, they are able to keep down the bush themselves to a certain extent, and then the work consists in picking up the ripe nuts from the ground, husking and drying them. The net profit from one tree is estimated at one shilling per annum. Besides the cultivation of their plantation the Messrs. ”

“ Cocoa plantations.—Artificial plantings of cocoa, Theobroma cacao, formed a major habitat type at Quoin Hill, and provided a major source of food for birds. Cocoa planters have found it necessary to provide shade with trees of some other species. In some instances trees from the original primary forest were left standing to provide this shade, but more often exotic trees were planted. Most of the shade trees were of no use to birds save for providing resting places. Trema orientalis was the most important in providing food for birds. ”

“ Neither in the Gold Coast nor in Southern Nigeria do many plantations give wider spacing than eight feet apart, and thus many of them crowd from 500 to 700 trees upon a single acre. The plantations in British West Africa being entirely [262] under native control, there are no very reliable statistics upon the annual yield per tree. One official at the Botanical Gardens of Aburi estimated that the natives obtain about 7 lbs. of cocoa per tree per annum; this is a very high average, and I am inclined to think seldom attained, for in Trinidad the annual yield is somewhere about 1 lb. ”

“ Isemonger took me to see something of the back country in a trap with a fiery Sumatra pony. There are miles of cocoa-nut plantations belonging to Chinamen all along the coast, with the trees in straight lines forming long, broad avenues, which have a certain gloomy grandeur about them. Then come sugarcane and padi, and then palm plantations again.
The cocoa-nut palm grows best near salt water, no matter how loose and sandy the soil is, and in these congenial circumstances needs neither manure nor care of any kind. It bends lovingly toward the sea, and drops its ripe fruit into it. ”

“ In these localities the climate as well as the positions and soil obtainable are generally so well adapted for the fruitful growth of cocoa that, even where the average annual rainfall is as low as 41 inches (the average at Aburi) , plantations are proving successful, the regular distribution, humidity of the atmosphere, and the natural shade constituting a compensation for the shortage.
The native planter sows the seeds in small patches or in roughly prepared beds in the vicinity of water, often in such proximity to one another as to choke a number of the young plants. ”

“ Native plantations are for the most part formed of irregular lines of trees, generally planted too closely. The evil effect of this does not become apparent until the trees attain a large size, when the excessive shade they afford to their fruit-bearing branches, which in cocoa consist of the trunk and main structure, prevents the fruit from forming and induces rot through want of evaporation of moisture. ”

“ But there are expedients to which the planter may have recourse which, if utilized, may return every dollar of cultural outlay. By the use of a wise rotation he can not only maintain his land in a good productive condition but realize a good biennial crop that will keep the plantation from being a financial drag. The rotation that occurs to me as most promising on the average cocoanut lands of these Islands would be, first, a green manure crop, followed by corn and legumes, succeeded by cotton, and then back to green manures. ”

“ The organization is of the simplest kind—purely and solely a native industry, few of the plantations being large ones, none more than about twenty-five to thirty acres and the majority not more than two to five acres. We saw none owned by white men, although I believe there are one or two, which are, however, quite insignificant. The volume of cocoa which pours out from the Gold Coast colony flows almost exclusively from countless small holdings spread all over the hinterland. ”

“ In twenty-five years the small Gold Coast farmer—the despised West African native who sits in the sun all day, opening his mouth for a ripe banana to fall into it when moved to hunger—has outpaced Brazil, the West Indies, Ecuador, and San Thome as a tropical cultivator. He has shown what he can do under an honest administration, as a landowner, and working for himself. Every yard of land put under cocoa cultivation has been won from the hungry forest. ”

“ The distance at which cocoa trees are planted by the native is roughly from 7 to 10 feet apart, whereas that recommended for plantations in the West Indies and Ceylon varies, with the quality of the soil and the elevation, from 12 to 15 feet; the latter would be more suitable for most of the Gold Coast plantations. The advantage which the native planter sees in his method of planting is, that in addition to getting a larger number of trees into a given space, the density of their foliage soon becomes so great that weeds cease to grow beneath, rendering cultivation unnecessary. ”

“ They pass generally under shade, and part of the way through groves of coffee and orange trees, fragrant plantations of cacao, and tracts of second-growth woods. The narrow brook-watered valleys, with which the land is intersected, alone have remained clothed with primæval forest, at least near the town. The houses along these beautiful roads belong chiefly to mameluco, mulatto, and Indian families, each of which has its own small plantation. There are only a few planters with larger establishments and these have seldom more than a dozen slaves. ”

“ These plantations of cocoa trees, or “chocolotales,” as they are called, were made in the last century by the Mojos Indians of the department of the Beni, who were gathered together from their wandering habits, and formed into villages by the Jesuit missionaries of the Spanish South American dependencies of Peru and Bolivia. They are very extensive, and are now claimed as government properties, being farmed out, by the authorities of Exaltacion and Trinidad, to speculators who make good profits, as there is no labour, or very little, expended in clearing. ”