Bo­bie-lee Dixon

The man re­spon­si­ble for the thriv­ing co­coa in­dus­try in Grena­da has died. The founder of Grena­da's first choco­late fac­to­ry, Mott Green, 47, was elec­tro­cut­ed on June 1, while re­pair­ing so­lar-pow­ered ma­chin­ery for cool­ing choco­late at his store­house on Bel­mont Es­tate in St Patrick, Grena­da.

Green es­tab­lished the Grena­da Choco­late Com­pa­ny with his busi­ness part­ners the late Doug Brown and Ed­mond Brown in 1999, with the slo­gan "Tree Bar"–in­dica­tive of its en­vi­ron­ment-con­scious ap­proach to pro­duc­tion.

Born David Lawrence Fried­man, Green, orig­i­nal­ly from New York, went to the is­land in 1987 as a teen with his fa­ther, Dr San­dor Fried­man, the di­rec­tor of med­ical ser­vices at Coney Is­land Hos­pi­tal, who taught on the is­land each win­ter.

The name Mott came from the way Grena­di­an pro­nounced his nick­name, Moth. His adopt­ed sur­name, Green, was re­flec­tive of his love for the en­vi­ron­ment.

Ac­cord­ing to the New York Times, Green, who grew up on Stat­en Is­land, ac­quired a taste for co­coa, a lo­cal favourite among Grena­di­ans, while liv­ing on the is­land. He soon left the re­mote hut he built him­self in the jun­gle there, and took in­ter­est in the con­cerns of co­coa farm­ers and work­ers. To get a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the agri­cul­ture of co­coa, Green with friend Doug Brown of Eu­gene, Ore­gon, stud­ied choco­late pro­duc­tion in San Fran­cis­co. While work­ing in Eu­gene, they re­stored old ma­chines from Eu­rope and built new ones them­selves. All their equip­ment was shipped to Grena­da in the late 1990s.

As a child Green al­ways found ways to be en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, like mak­ing go-karts us­ing lawn­mow­er en­gines. He was a uni­ver­si­ty dropout, who felt ac­cept­ing a de­gree would be con­tribut­ing to an "al­ready ex­ist­ing in­iq­ui­tous so­ci­ety." Green spent much of his 20s squat­ting with a com­mu­ni­ty of an­ar­chists in aban­doned homes in west Philadel­phia, where he "res­cued" food that restau­rants had planned to throw away and dis­trib­uted it to home­less peo­ple.

Per­haps that's why it was not sur­pris­ing that he de­fied the ad­verse cli­mat­ic con­di­tions in Grena­da, and set up a choco­late fac­to­ry us­ing so­lar en­er­gy to pro­duce rich dark choco­late bars of sin­gle ori­gin, made from Trini­tario co­coa. The Caribbean co­coa lat­er be­came the most en­vied by choco­late-mak­ers around the world.

The tiny op­er­a­tion sit­u­at­ed in the co­coa groves of Grena­da's rain­for­est,would even­tu­al­ly ex­port choco­late around the world with the help of sail­boats, bi­cy­cles and so­lar-pow­ered re­frig­er­a­tion.

The ide­al­ist worked with the lo­cal small farm­ers who were paid hand­some­ly ac­cord­ing to an­oth­er re­port in the UK Tele­graph. It said his 50 fac­to­ry work­ers earned the same wage as he did and at times even more. Green was al­so not­ed for this as it is of­ten ar­gued agri­cul­tur­al labour­ers re­ceive small wages and are not treat­ed hu­mane­ly. He lob­bied against the bad treat­ment of small co­coa farm­ers, es­pe­cial­ly against the ex­ploita­tion of child work­ers in Africa by buy­ers and ex­porters who sell co­coa to big choco­late com­pa­nies.

He fought these is­sues, the New York Times said, by deal­ing di­rect­ly with small grow­ers and by keep­ing the pro­cess­ing and pack­ag­ing of choco­late with­in Grena­da.

In a 2012 in­ter­view with a Dal­las-based mag­a­zine, D, Green was quot­ed as say­ing: "My pro­gres­sion was ac­tivist, love Grena­da, love co­coa, love ma­chines and tin­ker­ing, mak­ing choco­late, and do­ing it all with­out hurt­ing the land."

Green's choco­late-mak­ing rou­tine, ac­cord­ing to the New York Times, went some­thing like this: he dried co­coa beans in the sun; built, main­tained and pow­ered the ma­chin­ery to make choco­late; pack­aged the fin­ished prod­uct; and cob­bled to­geth­er an in­ter­na­tion­al net­work of dis­trib­u­tors, in­clud­ing vol­un­teer car­go cy­clists in the Nether­lands.

"With a week­ly out­put of less than 300 pounds, Grena­da Choco­late Com­pa­ny's choco­late, is some of the most ex­pen­sive choco­late in the world (a bar of Grena­da Dark, 71 per cent, costs close to six pounds) said the busi­ness­grena­da.com.

Though the com­pa­ny gained, recog­ni­tion from sev­er­al no­table or­gan­i­sa­tions for its con­tri­bu­tion to the econ­o­my, in­clud­ing ac­co­lades from the State De­part­ment, which praised its out­stand­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal con­ser­va­tion ef­forts and pro­mo­tion of or­gan­ic farm­ing.

In 2012, the com­pa­ny made its biggest ship­ping deal, de­liv­er­ing tens of thou­sands of choco­late bars to Eu­rope on a sail-pow­ered Dutch ship, the called Brig­an­tine Tres Hom­bres, op­er­at­ed by a com­pa­ny called Fair­trans­port.

A doc­u­men­tary film about the com­pa­ny, Noth­ing Like Choco­late, was re­leased last year. It was di­rect­ed by Kum-Kum Bhav­nani.

Now that "the choco­late man" is no more, his moth­er Dr Ju­dith Fried­man told the New York Times she and sev­er­al oth­er peo­ple in­volved with the com­pa­ny were meet­ing this month in Grena­da to dis­cuss fu­ture plans for the com­pa­ny.

Green saw some­thing, even when the peo­ple of the re­gion saw noth­ing

Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist and chef Ramin Ganeshram, who is of Trinida­di­an her­itage, told the T&T Guardian in a brief tele­phone in­ter­view, she was sad­dened and up­set by Green's death. The au­thor of Sweet Hands: Is­land Cook­ing From T&T, said she nev­er met Green in per­son but had the priv­i­lege of in­ter­view­ing him over the phone for an ar­ti­cle on the co­coa in­dus­try, which she was writ­ing for Is­lands Mag­a­zine.

"If any­body knows how choco­late is made, a trop­i­cal cli­mate is not con­ducive and it is al­so not able to sail. But here you had this 'crazy Amer­i­can guy' go­ing against all the odds to pro­duce a great dark choco­late, through en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly means.

"He sim­ply took a bean that is de­vel­oped in T&T–the Trini­tario–and cre­at­ed a gourmet sin­gle-ori­gin choco­late in­dus­try," said Ganeshram.

"For this guy to have had no back­ground his­to­ry in agri­cul­ture, let alone co­coa cul­ti­va­tion, to come to Grena­da and cre­ate such a great prod­uct, it sim­ply meant he saw some­thing, even when the peo­ple of the re­gion saw noth­ing."

She said in ad­di­tion to be­ing the head of such a great com­pa­ny, he was al­so re­spon­si­ble for bring­ing at­ten­tion to the con­di­tion of the co­coa in­dus­try and co­coa labour­ers.

"The norm was not to treat agri­cul­tur­al/co­coa labour­ers well. We would not even be dis­cussing the is­sue of child labour in the co­coa in­dus­try in West Africa, had it not been for Green and the ex­pose on the way he treat­ed his work­ers," said Ganeshram.

She said Green al­so proved you could cre­ate an in­cred­i­bly high-end prod­uct with lit­tle tech­nol­o­gy and with­out hurt­ing the en­vi­ron­ment.

Ganeshram said she hoped the com­pa­ny did not die along with Green.

On a spe­cial edi­tion of BBC Ra­dio 4's The Food Pro­gramme which paid trib­ute to Green, Sarah Jane Stanes of the British Acad­e­my of Choco­late said: "You won't have to have heard of Mott Green or even tast­ed his choco­late to find this sto­ry fas­ci­nat­ing be­cause it will take us in­to lush co­coa plan­ta­tions and in­side fra­grant fer­men­ta­tion rooms, but most of all it's a life sto­ry that serves as a re­minder how amaz­ing, or some­times com­pli­cat­ed but most­ly de­li­cious an ob­ses­sion can be."