Cocoa Farmers in Southern Taiwan Cut Carbon Emissions With Co-Op

Cocoa farmers and chocolatiers in southern Taiwan's Pingtung County are going green and cutting carbon emissions.

Transcript

00:00Huang Zhaoying inspects the cocoa pods growing in her orchard in Pingdong County in southern

00:07Taiwan. It's early in the season and there's still damage from last year's typhoons,

00:11but Huang isn't worried. Thanks to the local farmers co-op she's joined,

00:15the pods are bigger and healthier than ever, and there's no need to worry about marketing.

00:30Chocolate is something of a specialty in this part of Taiwan, and that's in part thanks to the co-op's

00:35chair, Chiu Junyu. Chiu has been in cocoa for a decade, and he's seen the crop's ups and especially

00:41its downs. A few years ago, farmers were cutting down their cacao trees as they failed to find buyers.

00:47Now his co-op helps give Pingdong's chocolate a bigger profile and find a bigger market.

00:53Around a quarter of Pingdong's 62 hectares of cocoa fields now has an annual contract with the co-op.

01:00Cocoa is a complicated business, but here each step is carefully organized. Once a week,

01:07cocoa pods come in from the farms. The co-op does quality control and then begins a precise process

01:13of fermentation that can take up to two weeks. Beans must be carefully turned so they get the right

01:18amount of sun exposure and meet the criteria for sale.

01:21But quality isn't this co-op's only concern. To give its products an edge, it's going green.

01:33Standard chocolate production emits 17 to 19 kilograms of CO2 per kilogram of product.

01:40The co-op has this down to 7 kilograms and wants to push things even further. Last July, it got Taiwan's

01:48first carbon label for Pingdong cocoa. That certification didn't come easy as one local official with a passion

01:55for the cocoa business attests.

01:57The co-coo business attests.

02:08the business attests.

02:38But with climate change concern a growing factor in what people buy, these farmers and

02:48their co-op think they've hit on a plan to boost local agriculture and put chocolate

02:52from Taiwan's southern tip on a bigger stage.

02:55Joseph Wu and John Van Trieste for Taiwan Plus.