Commodities

Cocoa Tech Revival in Brazil Offers Some Relief From Hot Market

  • Irrigation and new machinery are supporting cocoa expansion
  • Country seen resuming cocoa exports after years of decay
A machine used to harvest cocoa pods on a farm in Eunapolis, Bahia state, Brazil, on April 5.Photographer: Dado Galdieri/Bloomberg
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Valuable cocoa beans pour from the pipe of what looks like a small train making its way through tropical fruit trees in Brazil, leaving only husks on the ground.

The machine is bringing automation to the husking of ripe cocoa pods — a significant improvement over the traditional labor-intensive harvesting process of picking fruit from trees and manually cutting through the stalks with a blade.