Ray of hope for pacific cocoa farmers

Transcript

South Pacific cocoa farmers will soon be introduced to the world of artisan chocolate making, bringing the chance of significantly higher returns.

The making of the world's first Bougainville chocolate bar is one step closer with a crowd funding initiative raising more finances than expected.

The brain child of the Wellington Chocolate Factory's Rochelle Harrison and Gabe Davidson the ambitious plan involves a Bougainville farmer, a yacht and one tonne of premium cocoa.

Koroi Hawkins filed this report.

Some people love chocolate. Others have an addiction. But for the founders of the Wellington Chocolate Factory in New Zealand, Gabe Davidson and Rochelle Harrison, it is an all-consuming passion.

GABE DAVIDSON: I've been interested in beans for a long time, I moved to Melbourne for thirteen years and was involved in the coffee industry over there and it was quite fascinating sourcing beans to roast and making them into delicious coffees. And then I got more and more interested in chocolate and realised that there was a whole new kind of chocolate revolution happening out there.

ROCHELLE HARRISON: Well I've been a pastry chef for about 18 years and about five years ago I was working quite heavily with chocolate and realised aw, I've just sort of always known to eat, know where your food's coming from and there was nothing like that with chocolate and I started just researching and researching chocolate and started making it. And so I have been researching for a good four years now and then I teamed up with Gabe last year and we smashed out this factory.

Artisan or craft chocolate is making a comeback on the world stage with its emphasis on purity, quality and knowing where your food is coming from. Craft chocolate makers usually deal directly with farmers paying above market prices for high grades of cocoa.

GABE DAVIDSON: Most craft bean to bar chocolate factories in the world use Central or South American beans and a little Madagascar, but very little is known about the beans of the South Pacific. And so if this is a successful case study, which I am sure it will be, then we can potentially replicate this in other South Pacific and showcase cocoa beans of the South Pacific to the rest of the world.

And whether by fate or fortune one of the rare and exotic beans of the world soon came knocking at their factory door courtesy of New Zealand volunteer worker Sera Price who had just returned from the autonomous Papua New Guinea province of Bougainville where she had met an extraordinary man known simply as Mr Cocoa.

SERA PRICE: James Rutana, Mr Cocoa he's a fantastic person he's incredibly knowledgeable on the Cocoa and as well is very, very passionate. He wants desperately agriculture to be supported and to be the backbone of the region as opposed to mining because, it's sustainable and the vast majority of the population can participate directly in it. He's been doing that, a lot of that, like working with his, with the community off his own back, he has built a classroom where the farmers can come up, he can teach them what he's been doing and pass on his knowledge. And so he's been boxing on by himself mostly, to do this but yeah it's great that the Wellington Chocolate Factory can support him.

And so the Wellington Chocolate Voyage was born, the concept to sail one tonne of premium quality beans from Bougainville to Wellington and make the world's very first Bougainville chocolate bar.

GABE DAVIDSON: Basically what we want to do is get one tonne of great quality cocoa beans from Bougainville and make them into chocolate bars. We are going to send a lot of those bars out to our backers who helped us reach our goals with kickstarter. But we are also going to send a lot of bars to our friends who have craft factories all around the world, to showcase Bougainville as a world class cocoa growing region.

Back on Bougainville Mr Cocoa, James Rutana continues to till his land, sowing rice crops under the trees in his cocoa plantation to maximise land usage. Mr Cocoa, who has worked with cocoa for 50 years, wants to see a lucrative, sustainable industry across the South Pacific.  

JAMES RUTANA: I think for me it's a great trade promotion for my people and myself and for the industry. My wish is that if I can get support like what Wellington Chocolate Factory is helping me if I can get some assistance like that, I think I can push cocoa to a much further height than it has been.

On a more serious note Bougainville is a land in repair and a people in healing. Ravaged by a ten year civil war which claimed thousands of lives, brought industry and basic services to a standstill it is only now getting back on its feet. So this small Chocolate Voyage may be exactly what is needed to reintroduce Bougaingille cocoa and its people to the world.