Cocoa Farming in Queensland

Talking with growers...

Sep 21, 2022

Cocoa is grown around the world within a band between 20 degrees north and south of the equator. While many have heard of cocoa from Ghana or Ecuador, Papua New Guinea or Vietnam, few realise that cocoa is also grown in Australia, primarily between Tully and Mossman in Far North Queensland. This area is also home to the Daintree Rainforest National Park and the Great Barrier Reef; both UNESCO world heritage listed.

In August 2022, I spent a week in Queensland learning about Australian cacao (check out my other posts to learn more). One of my favourite meetings was with Carmen, one of Queensland’s cocoa farmers and perhaps one of the most innovative ones. “Many of the cocoa farmers may have started off the same here, but over time everyone has diverged and done different things.” Carmen grows her cacao using only organic fertiliser, doesn’t spray for weeds and is focused on biodynamic and homeopathic methods of production. She uses seaweed and cocoa seed ferments as additional fertilisers. “I probably don’t have the highest yields compared to others, but still, I get a lot of pods.” A walk through the trees confirms this. There are beautiful ripe pods everywhere.

She starts picking in April/May until December, maybe January. Flowers come on through the year and if they developed into a pod, she'll pick them. Last week she picked 800 kilograms of pods by herself, cutting them off one by one and throwing them into the pickup. "Some trees are getting a bit tall, especially the trees growing in the shade of the palms.” She tells me that she has several different varieties of cocoa grown, and although originally the seedlings were all from Papua New Guinea, each is a different colour, size, and shape. They all start off green, some then turn red, even purple and then as they ripen, they turn yellow or orange. Some have smooth skin, some much rougher. A few of her trees have cocoa pods that look like little round cannon balls “but they all have roughly the same number of seeds inside, regardless of the variety”.

Read the full post here

Next week I’ll have some more fantastic interviews and tips for Queensland.

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