Yes, even the Chocolate has a day dedicated worldwide and Sunday, July 7th will be the day!
We are talking about the 7th of July because it seems to be the day when the product was presented in Europe for the first time in 1550, so our exquisite companion of happy days, but also of sad days where we use it as an antidepressant, has been around for 469 years.
We all know that the best chocolate in the world is produced in Switzerland (a Country very close to our StartUp beyondBeanie because a part of the initiative lives in the homeland of the sweet gold).
So Sunday we all are allowed to eat chocolate without feeling guilty to our bodies.
But the Cocoa beans, the basic element to produce all chocolate foods, where do they grow?
World leader in Ivory Coast, followed by Ghana and Indonesia, but the top ten also includes our neighbors countries: Brazil, Ecuador, and Perú.
Having said that, we are particularly keen to inform you that even if few people know it, Bolivia also boasts an enviable production of cocoa, so that it has been included among the grains in the competition at the Salon du Chocolat to be held next October in Paris.
"Bolivia has wild cocoa of excellence," says Jaime Freire, an international expert of Ecuadorian nationality, known as ‘Papa Cacao’.
The production and collection of Bolivian cocoa is in the hands of more than 9,000 families of farmers and indigenous producers, distributed in five departments (La Paz, Beni, Cochabamba, Santa Cruz, and Pando), concentrated mainly in the north of the department of La Paz, where 81% of production is obtained. Bolivia has two main types of cocoa: the foreign and the wild cocoa that grows naturally throughout the Bolivian Amazon.
Wild cocoa is found within the natural system. Trees produce and reproduce without human intervention. Molecularly it is different from the other genetic groups of cultivated cocoa, is characterized by being unique in flavor and aroma within the world's finest cocoa groups, and its production is oriented to the demand of special markets whose prices are higher due to low production and scarcity in Bolivia.
Its origin is the Amazon region of Bolivia, is distributed on the banks of the rivers of the Amazon basin of Bolivia, within the departments of Beni, Santa Cruz, Pando, Cochabamba and La Paz.
The most recent figures report 14,884 hectares of hybrid or foreign cocoa and 12,115 hectares of wild cocoa.
At the international level, Bolivia is in the 31st place of cocoa producers, which is equivalent to only 0.5 percent of world participation.
But we must point out that Bolivia does not take advantage of even 1% of the productive potential of native cocoa, although it is among the best in the world and has a large national and international market. The main threats that this highly nutritious wild product faces today are linked to gold mining in the Amazon and the effects of climate change.
The information was provided during the launch of the first version of the Bolivian Cocoa and Chocolate Salon 2019.
HAVE A SWEET DAY NEXT SUNDAY!!
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