Saveur – July 2019

74 SAVEUR.COM

From left: Cutting ba-

nana leaves, which are

used to line fermenta-

tion boxes; fermented

and dried cocoa

beans; fresh cocoa

beans are surrounded

by a sweet white pulp

that tastes nothing

like chocolate; fresh

cocoa fruit ready to be

processed.

Tanzanian cocoa growers have long been at the mercy of itinerant

buyers paying low prices despite the steep costs of growing.

But a well-meaning company has created a supply chain that’s

better for the farmers—and makes for better chocolate

TANZANIA to SAN FRANCISCO

BY HILARY HEULER PHOTOGRAPHS BY ERIC WOLFINGER

S

arah Maglass lives in a new red-brick house in

Tanzania’s fertile Kilombero Valley, just south of

Udzungwa National Park, nearly 40 miles from

the nearest electricity or paved road. In her vil-

lage, Mbingu, there is one dirt road and a tangled network

of sandy footpaths that snake between rice paddies, mud-

walled houses, and stands of leathery banana trees. Maglass

is a farmer, like nearly everyone here. She cultivates patches

of blushing pink pineapples and rows of corn, but it ’s her

5-acre cocoa plantation that makes the real money.

Once every two weeks during the six-month harvest

period between June and December, Maglass wends

her way through her 1,500 trees, ducking the low-slung

branches to hack firm, ovular pods from their trunks.

Unlike the carefully controlled monocultures of other cocoa

regions, the diversity of Tanzania’s trees means that the

Middlemen

The