“I’m currently writing a research paper about cacao—looking at how cacao is produced in the landscape and how it interacts with the species around it. In high-production plantations, a lot of times what will happen is that they will plant the cacao underneath the shaded canopy, because as a baby it will not survive under the harsh tropical sun; but then to spur higher production, they’ll thin out the entire rest of the forest and have just cacao growing. That’s been shown to have higher leaf turnover rate, shorter productive life cycle…basically all these things that indicate that this plant gets stressed out when it isn’t grown naturally. So, what I’m really interested in is looking for ways to shift our agriculture system further along the gradient from heavily cultivated plantations towards the end of natural landscapes, trying to mimic what would naturally be here without too much human intervention.”
