Cacao beans are seeds of the fruit or pod that sprout from
the trunk and thicker branches of the cacao tree. It takes
approximately five years for a tree to begin bearing fruit,
and its useful lifetime is about thirty years. Each tree
bears about a dozen viable pods per semi-annual harvest
(although continuous production goes on to a small degree),
and each ripe pod holds about forty beans, which translates
into roughly 1,000 seeds per tree per year. Trees can be
planted as little as three meters apart or as many as twelve
meters apart. Approximately 500 cacao beans will produce one
pound of bittersweet chocolate. The pods are harvested
individually by hand and then usually sliced open by hand
to remove the seeds and the surrounding pulp. Farms that
have capital and access to electricity sometimes have machines
that open the pod and extract the pulp and seeds, which are
gathered into piles for fermentation.
