The first-ever Big Island Cacao Conference at the Komohana Research Station was a blend of brainstorming and assessment with, of course, a bit of delicious chocolate mixed in.
Nearly 90 members of the nascent cacao industry turned out for Friday’s daylong event, a joint effort between Hawaii County’s Department of Research and Development and the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources.
“The county and CTAHR feel there is great potential (in cacao),” breakout session leader Andrea Kawabata said before her group began to discuss current strengths and weaknesses of the developing industry. Cacao is a high-value crop, she said, and well worth an investment of resources.
The conference was a way to bring together both those who grow the crop and those who process it for sale, while figuring out ways to address the needs of both. Many in attendance had not yet started to farm, but still wanted to get involved with the industry.
Alyssa Cho, a CTAHR researcher who specializes in sustainable farming systems and fruit and nut production, said the day was a chance to help “formulate where the cacao industry is going.”
Speakers discussed the current state of Hawaii cacao, including the types being grown in the states and the various diseases that threaten the crop.
The only state in the country with commercial plantations (cacao trees can only grow in a certain Equatorial belt), Hawaii is still a newcomer to the cacao stage. The local industry’s great cache is not in its ability to grow massive quantities of cacao, but rather in its ability to produce an all-American, fair-trade-friendly product that consumers are eager to support.
Prices for Hawaii-grown cacao are more than double the prices for internationally grown specialty cacao, according to presenter Daniel O’Doherty, an independent consultant who first started researching cacao as a UH student.
“That’s a crazy price,” he said. “People are clamoring for it.”
But in spite of the demand, the industry is still developing the communal pool of knowledge that has helped the coffee industry thrive.
“Right now, we’re still trying to find our way,” O’Doherty said.
The good thing about having that blank slate, he continued, was that it provided an opportunity to “set practices in the right direction from the beginning.”
The conference offered a forum to kick-start those practices. During breakout sessions, producers and processors divided into groups to discuss the obstacles they faced in launching a business, which ranged from acquiring land to the deceptively straightforward aim of making a business plan. Some suggested that the county and CTAHR could help by providing support for navigating the agriculture grant and loan system.
Other attendees spoke of the high costs of entry into the cacao industry, particularly on the processing end, where special venues are needed to ferment and dry the beans. Without success in those two areas, O’Doherty said, the quality of the chocolate itself would be subpar.
Still, the mood overall was one of optimism, with speakers and attendees both understanding that it would take time to fully establish the industry.
“You need to be thinking decades (ahead) when you’re planting cacao,” O’Doherty said.
Email Ivy Ashe at iashe@hawaiitribune-herald.com.