Chocolate and Sustainable Cocoa Farming

by Peter McMahon, Philip Keane

Chocolate consumers and environmental and social activists are increasingly less inclined to accept a situation where cocoa and chocolate production exploits rainforests and smallholder farmers in the tropics. With the exhaustion of forest resources for growing cocoa cheaply, the handful of multinational food conglomerates that now dominate chocolate manufacturing are becoming concerned about a sustainable supply of cocoa beans and are becoming involved in efforts to assist farmers and ensure a stable supply chain. Organisations are being developed to certify that cocoa production is environmentally and socially acceptable. This book introduces the biology of cocoa, and the history of cocoa domestication, planting and chocolate manufacture. It describes how cocoa can be grown with other useful species in an environmentally sound way to increase production on existing farms, to reduce incursion into forests, restore biodiversity, and empower and improve the livelihoods of the six million farming families in the tropics who depend on it.

550 pages, Hardcover

Published April 25, 2023

About the author

Peter McMahon is an award-winning science journalist who has worked for CTV.ca, Discovery Channel.ca, written for The Toronto Star, the kids publication YES Mag, CAA online magazine, and written science features for such magazines as Canadian Geographic and Today’s Parent.

In February of 2010, he covered health science stories at the Vancouver Winter Games for CTVolympics.ca

While serving as senior online producer for Discovery Channel, Peter hosted, edited, and produced the first TV-quality LIVE science specials on the Internet.

An avid “wilderness astronomer” , Peter was the first to propose that Jasper National Park become a dark sky preserve, and worked with Parks Canada to have it designated the world’s largest astronomy park, as of March 2011.

He has spoken on science communication and astronomy at countless universities, science centres, conferences, and national parks, as well as delivering science communication workshops at Durham College, Science North/Laurentian University’s Science Communication program, and The Banff Centre.

Peter’s second installment in the Machines of the Future science experiment book series – Space Tourism – published by Kids Can Press, is due to hit bookshelves in fall 2011.