FUN FACTS

• It takes 400cocoa beans to make one pound of chocolate.
• There are an estimated 1.5 million cocoa farms in West Africa.
• Some cacao trees are more than 200 years old, but most give marketable cocoa beans for only the first 25 years.

• A farmer must wait four to five years for a cacao tree to produce its first beans.
• Theobroma Cacao is the tree that produces cocoa beans, and it means “food of the gods.“ Carolus Linnaeus, the father of plant taxonomy, named it.
• Each cacao tree produces approximately 2,500 beans.
• The ancients also fermented the pulp of the cacao pod to make other beverages.
• Worldwide, 40 million to 50 million people depend upon cocoa for their livelihood.