Pará region, in the heart of the Amazon, leads national cocoa production

In Brazil, cocoa has long been synonymous with Bahia, a strong cultural link that Jorge Amado’s novels and TV soap operas helped to consolidate. But the scenario is changing rapidly — more than half of our cocoa is already from Pará.

Current leader in national production, Pará had been threatening Bahian supremacy for some years, with advances and setbacks, and at the moment it is ahead. According to the Systematic Survey of Agricultural Production (LSPA) of 2022, published by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), it already accounts for 50.68% of production.

The state also wins in productivity. The average yield is 948 kilos per hectare, while the national average is 469 kilos per hectare.

As it is native to the Amazon region, cocoa finds ideal conditions in Pará – heat all year round and extremely high humidity, which you can literally feel on your skin. Even in winter, considered the dry season, it is not uncommon for the day to be interrupted by rapid torrential rains, which are more like showers that open suddenly.

In its natural environment, cocoa also resists better to the most common pests, such as witches’ broom, which came to decimate Bahia’s crops in the 1990s — the fungus even appears in Pará cocoa trees, but is easier to control.

Not by chance, the advance of Pará’s crops has been rapid. The 2022 harvest, which took place earlier than usual, in April, yielded 233,000 tonnes of dried almonds, according to data from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (Mapa). In 2010, there were only 67 thousand tons.

Medicilândia, which since 2021 has held the title of National Cocoa Capital, heads the list of champion municipalities in the state. Behind come Uruará, Anapu, Brasil Novo, Placas, Altamira and Vitória do Xingu.

But everything there is very new. Large-scale cultivation is only 50 years old — it was the Trans-Amazonian highway, inaugurated in 1972, which tore through the forest and allowed access to remote regions, where the activity was purely extractive.

Started in 1976, cocoa planting remained timid until 2012, when the Forest Code determined that farms in the Amazon should maintain 80% of native forests (and no longer 20%, as it used to be).

By force, sugarcane plantations began to give way to cocoa, which can be grown in legal reserves — in the cabruca system, cocoa trees grow among native trees.

Producer Élido Trevisan, 68, is part of the first wave of trailblazers. In the company of his parents, at the age of 18, he left Lieutenant Portela (RS) for Medicilândia, in 1972, attracted by the promise of cheap land and facilities to pay. But he only heard about cocoa four years later.

“In 1976, we received the first seeds from Ilhéus. I planted 10 hectares. The first harvest, in 1980, produced just a little fruit”, recalls the producer, who today harvests up to 70 tons a year.

The following years witnessed more and more immigrants arriving in the region. Among them was Belmiro Faes, 70, from Ascurra (SC), who acquired 96 hectares on the banks of the Trans-Amazonian.

“My father grew tobacco and no longer wanted to produce something that was harmful to people’s health. As the government facilitated the purchase and a neighbor of ours had already come, he decided to come too in 1981. But he almost gave up. It was a lot of difficulty, this here there was only one hut and five mango trees,” says Faes’ daughter, Sarah Faes Brogni.

Today, at the helm of Sítio Ascurra, Sarah and her husband, Robson Brogni, harvest up to 200 tons of cocoa each year. A small portion, only 5%, is made from fine cocoa, the one preferred by artisanal chocolatiers who are fans of the bean to bar culture. The fruits require special care from cultivation to drying and are worth twice as much on the market.

Among the buyers of Sítio Ascurra almonds, which won first place in the III National Special Cocoa Quality Competition in Brazil, in 2021, are Magian Cacao and Java Chocolates from Minas Gerais.

But the Brogni couple discovered that producing bean-to-bar chocolate under their own brand is also a great deal. Since 2019, Sarah has been making bars with high cocoa content in the small factory she set up on the farm. The masonry structure with a tiled interior is right next to the almond drying ovens, close to the fermentation troughs and a few steps from the plantation.

Increasing the production of fine cocoa, aligning with the demands of the effervescent bean to bar market and overcoming five decades of isolation are precisely the main challenges facing cocoa farmers in Pará from now on.

The first step was taken last week, with the holding of Chocolat Xingu 2022. Organized by the Chocolat Festival, which already promotes annual editions in Salvador (BA), Ilhéus (BA), Belém (PA), Linhares (ES), Portugal and São Paulo (SP), the fair took place in Altamira and brought together 100 exhibitors from the entire chain, from farmers to chocolatiers.

Organizer of the event, businessman Marco Lessa believes that the producer from Pará depends on information to take a step forward.

“Until today, we only saw isolated initiatives around here, without a plan, and the producer ends up being the link in the chain that earns the least. I want to show that it is possible to verticalize production and reach the manufacture of chocolate, because the technologies are more accessible, and even target the foreign market. All you have to do is work well on Amazon Product marketing.”

Stimulating experience tourism is another of the event’s targets, this, yes, a much higher step that Pará producers need to overcome.

Even Altamira, the most developed city among the cocoa-producing municipalities in the state, with a high tourist potential for being on the banks of the Xingu River, receives a single daily flight from Belém (PA).

The only airline to land there, Azul charges R$3,500 for the São Paulo-Altamira ticket — one way. The price is equivalent to a ticket to Miami, in the United States.

The farms also lack the minimum structure to receive tourists. The only one for now to have gates open to visitors, doctor Antônio Pantoja, owner of the Abelha Cacau farm, established himself on the outskirts of Altamira in 2015 and already welcomes groups interested in getting to know its 25,000 cocoa plants, in addition to the meliponary, where it is possible to observe dozens of species of native stingless bees.

“Without them, there would be no Amazon. Lighter and with greater flight capacity, native bees are largely responsible for pollinating the forest”, he explains, regarding the junction of subjects.

In the urban area, where his small chocolate factory operates, Pantoja has just built a restaurant and is finalizing an inn with 16 suites. By the end of the year, he hopes to accommodate the first tourists interested in immersing themselves in the cacao culture of the Amazon — and he hopes they come not only from Brazil, but also from abroad.