Environmental effects of cocoa production populations and habitats to flourish. Finally, shade can be extremely helpful in keeping and lengthening the productivity of old growth Cacao plants. Environmental effects of cocoa production The environmental effects of cocoa production Cocoa Beans are a high demand consumer item all over the world. They are used in products such as chocolate, candy bars, drinks and cocoa powder. However, cocoa farming and the production of cocoa beans are extremely fragile and labour-intensive processes. The process begins with a Cacao plant, or Theobroma cacao, in which the beans are extracted from pods that grow directly on the cocoa trees branches.
Theobroma cacao of Veracruz, Mexico dates cacao's preparation by pre-Olmec peoples as early as 1750 BC. On the Pacific coast of Chiapas, Mexico, a Mokaya archaeological site provides evidence of cacao beverages dating even earlier, to 1900 BC. The initial domestication was probably related to the making of a fermented, thus alcoholic beverage. In 2018, researchers who analysed the genome of cultivated cacao trees concluded that the domesticated cacao trees all originated from a single domestication event that occurred about 3,600 years ago somewhere in Central America. Several mixtures of cacao are described in ancient texts, for ceremonial or medicinal, as well