Save the rainforest...and save chocolate!

It's a bold headline, but I got your attention, didn't I? Actually, it's true...the fate of chocolate is in the hands of those who care and would protect our rainforests. In fact, two of my great loves, coffee and chocolate, hinge on the preservation of our rainforests.

A long time ago, if you were a farmer, you held onto fundamental truths. One truth was God controls the weather, not man. Another truth was that man was the steward of the land, and that requires a respect from man for all of nature and its wonders. Another truth was the law of checks and balances. Another law was that everything is inter-connected. So, if you were a farmer a long time ago, you planted diversified crops, knowing that rotating the crops was good for the soil. You had chickens that pecked in the dirt and provided a sort of "aeration" to the soil. You had cows that grazed on grass, and in turn left their manure as fertilizer. You were the steward, overseeing all the little pieces of the puzzle, ultimately relying on God and nature for your harvest.

Over time, though, man got "too big for his britches," as my grandma says. Man decided that he wanted more, and more, and more. So he cooped up all the chickens in houses, side by side by side, and kept them there. He rounded up the cows into overcrowded pens...who cares? They're just animals...and fed them corn instead of grass because it was cheaper. He could then plow under his pastures and plant more...rows and rows of the same crop, year after year after year. He could alter nature's system of checks and balances by using pesticides, fungicides, and man-made fertilizers. Clever, huh?

It seems like now we're caught in this horrible, all-consuming cycle. "I want more, I don't care how it's done, I don't want to see it, I just want it and I want it now."

This mentality is what eventually will ruin chocolate, and possibly coffee, for us all. Unless...Remember in Dr. Seuss' The Lorax when the onceler warns the young man with one word? Unless...unless someone like you does something...unless these ways are changed...unless...

Chocolate is awesome. Adored by almost everyone. And taken for granted. Keeping up with the high demand for chocolate isn't easy. Chocolate comes from the seeds of pods that grow on the cocoa tree, and cocoa trees grow in rainforests. But farmers, trying to grow more, more, more, have relocated cocoa trees to "sun farms." On sun plantations, farmers plant only cocoa...the cocoa is shaded until it is mature enough to flower, then the shade trees are removed, exposing the cocoa to the sun's full strength. Cocoa produced this way produces a greater yield, but only for a short period of time. Within ten or so years, the cocoa tree will stop producing pods altogether.

In its natural habitat, the rainforest, natural pollinators called midgens breed in leaf litter on the rainforest floor. These pollinate the cocoa. Natural plants, mammals, and insects provide a complex system of pest management. Nature's checks and balances. When farmers take cocoa out of this system, and instead use sun farming, they then have to use man-made pesticides and fertilizers. Coffee is in the same boat, I'm afraid. Both coffee and cocoa originated in rainforests, both were removed from their natural habitats, both are now being grown in isolation on large, non-shaded monocrop plantations.

Researchers feel that sustainable farming is the only thing that will save chocolate, and coffee. And rainforests. Sustainable farmers would plant layers of farms along the edges of rainforests, thus not encroaching into them. These farms would act as buffer zones to protect the rainforests, and since planting close to the rainforest would allow the natural cycle to continue, farmers would have no need for pesticides, fungicides and fertilizers. Farmers also would plant other crops in rotation, and this would supplement the farmers' incomes.

Seems like to me, we are coming full circle. We have, as a consuming culture, interupted nature's cycle for our profit. We have trampled on natural law, God's law, just to make a buck. And now, we're beginning to see that this over-consumption, this greed, is just not sustainable in the long run. I love my chocolate. (And my coffee.) I don't want to see the day when cocoa becomes an endangered "species." Sustainable farming is not a new idea; it's what our forefathers did. It's time to wake up, smell the coffee (and chocolate), get back to basics. And save our rainforests.