The Cacao Pollination Miracle | Sacred Earth Community

With the blossoming of nature and plentiful flowers all around us at present, life is reflecting themes of fertility and union. So, we thought it was the perfect time to share a little more about the truly miraculous nature of cacao pollination with you - something we've been wanting to share for ages, especially since our trip to the farm in Peru last year!!!

Do you have any idea how cacao is pollinated? If not get ready, because honestly it is quite a miracle!!

Here's a little something we put together to blow your mind…

The Process of Pollination is pretty straightforward right?

Pollination occurs when pollen from the male part of a flower (called the anther) is transferred to the female part (called the stigma) of another flower by a pollinator (1)

These wonderful pollinators can range from birds, bats, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, wasps, small mammals, and most importantly, the amazing bees! (2)

So you’d be forgiven for thinking that it’s the same with cacao – but as you’re about to find out, it’s way more complex! Let’s dive deeper…

A few Bizarre Facts you might not know about Cacao:

Cacao is a hermaphrodite, meaning it has both a male and female part.
It is an ‘auto-incompatible’ tree, meaning that cacao can’t self-pollinate. Cross pollination - where they receive pollen from a different tree - is the only way pollination occurs. Cacao flowers that receive pollen from same-tree flowers won’t produce fruits (3)
Cacao trees can produce up to 250 000 flowers per year, however the rate of pollination is only 10% of the thousands of flowers produced. That means that 90% of the flowers are not pollinated! (4)
The cacao flowers are incredibly tiny (around 1-2cm), and their reproductive organs are even smaller and hidden, impeding the pollination process even more.
Due to cacao pollen being super sticky, and the reproductive organs of the flower so hard to access, pollination by wind isn’t an option – it’s purely reliant on pollinators.
Bees not only are unable to pollinate cacao due to their size, but some may even be robbing pollen (5)
Being such a tiny flower, most pollinators don’t stand a chance!

Enter the humble midge…

So how does Pollination of Cacao work?

Due to the cacao flower being so beautifully intricate and somewhat complex, only a tiny and hairy (for the pollen to attach to) pollinator can do the important job of ensuring pollination occurs.

For context - The male parts of the flower, where the pollen are located, are covered by hoods and the female part of the flower, where the ovules are located, is in a cage formed by five rods called staminodes. (4)

Hence the need for a small, hairy insect as they have to first enter the hoods of the flower, where the sticky pollen can get stuck to their body, and they then have to enter the staminode cage to deposit this pollen for the ovules to be fertilised. (4)

Cacao flowers are strictly entomophilously pollinated, meaning that they can only be pollinated by insects (6). Although bees are very often found hanging around the cacao flowers, they are too big to access the pollen. It is the tiny, modest (if somewhat annoying!) biting midge – mainly from the Ceratopogonidae family and (to a lesser extent) gall midges from the Cecidomyiidae family (3) that are among the most important known cacao pollinators worldwide.

And even then, the process isn’t necessarily easy! Not only does the cacao flower have many competitors in the way of other alluring flowers, but the midges can also only carry a certain load of pollen. “For a tiny flower to develop into a football-size fruit, 100 to 250 grains of pollen are required, while a single midge can only carry around 30 grains of pollen at a time” (3).

So this means for a cacao flower to be successfully pollinated, it needs between 4 and 8 fully loaded midges to enter the flower’s stigma, that have first visited cacao flowers from other nearby trees - Wow!

With the process of pollinating cacao so complex, it truly is a miracle we have ceremonial cacao and chocolate at all!

Is there anything that can make the pollination process easier?

There are various initiatives attempting to increase cacao pollination and therefore cacao yield. These methods mostly fall into two categories:

Boosting natural pollination by creating more optimal conditions for cacao pollinators - the midge.
The expanding practice of hand pollination.

Hand Pollination

Hand pollination, may be incredibly labour intensive and requires painstaking precision, but it has proved successful in rocketing commercial plantation yields by 51% to 161% in some cases (7)! Initiatives such as the COCOBOD (the Ghana Cacao Board) in Ghana are also acclaiming the social benefits of hand pollination in cacao plantations for the training and employment opportunities it provides to youth. (8)

Whilst these results may seem impressive, it’s important not overlook the unsustainability and negative long-term environmental impacts of large-scale commercial plantations, such as:

Deforestation: clearing rainforests to make space for intensive farming, damaging biodiversity and the ecosystem.
Monoculture Practice: commercial plantations focusing on cultivating only one crop, deplete soil nutrients, increases the need for pesticides, and reduce long-term productivity.
Slash and Burn Techniques: Once the soil is depleted, farmers use destructive methods like slash and burn to clear new land, causing further deforestation, desertification, and habitat loss.
Economic Pressure: Farmers are pressured to maximize yields due to global demand for chocolate, leading them to adopt unsustainable practices, prioritizing quantity over environmental concerns.
Limited Incentives: Historically low chocolate prices and lack of access to sustainable farming methods force farmers into unsustainable practices for survival.

Alan Young’s insight in his fascinating research explains, “Cacao is a poor contender for a commercial crop and the associated man-made niche it has been forced to occupy - the plantation habitat. This lack of suitability as a plantation crop helps explain the paucity of natural pollination that has plagued the commercialization of cacao since its plantation-type cultivation initiated by the Spaniards and British centuries ago.” He suggests, “Natural pollination is expedited by flying insects well adapted to the rainforest understory and not to the open spaces of well-groomed cacao plantations.” (5)

Hand pollination in plantation cacao has also proven to reduce the need for agrochemicals such as fertilizers and pesticides. This in turn increases the life of the soils, making them somewhat more sustainable. (9). But as we previously mentioned considerable environmental damage has already been done by a commercial plantation.

It seems obvious cacao wasn’t really built for life on a plantation. The open, orderly rows of cacao trees arranged to maximize commercial production, disrupt the pollinators natural behaviours, and offers them limited places to breed. There’s a mismatch between how prolifically cacao flowers in plantations grow and how its natural pollinators behave. Young calls it an "ecological illogic"(5).

It’s pretty clear we need to rethink how we’re cultivating cacao.

Boosting Natural Pollination

Cacao is much more at home in denser, rainforest, where the specialized pollinators that aid its reproduction thrive.

The good news is that the optimum conditions best suited for midges are actually the same conditions that cacao needs to flourish and thrive - damp, shady, humid, in semi-aquatic or moist soil conditions, surrounded by other plants and animals, with lots of decomposing organic matter to feed from (leaf litter, cocoa pod husks, rotting fruits from shade trees. (10)

By using organic and biodynamic farming techniques, the midges can thrive and flourish. All of the biproducts of cacao production (husks, leaf letter, old rotting pods etc.) become compost and the synergy of the surrounding environment becomes more regenerative for all species.

And this is exactly what the small family run farms in Peru, where your Sacred Earth Medicine Ceremonial Cacao is sourced from, are meticulous in maintaining! In fact, they are taking this one step further by introducing syntropic farming methods.

Honouring the Midge

So after exploring the amazing pollination process, it definitely invites us to deepen our gratitude to all the delicious and nutritious cacao-based products we are blessed to buy with such ease – and even appreciate the humble biting midge (generally not particularly popular!) for its paramount role in the process!

We genuinely hope you’ve enjoyed learning a little more about the wonder of cacao. Next time you’re drinking a yummy ceremonial cacao, perhaps take an extra moment to savour not only it’s potent medicinal benefits, but also the true miracle that has it brought to you in the first place!