While sugar attracts the foreigner, the Dominican's favorite staple has been cacao. The cacao or chocolate tree grows in a number of the West India Islands, but in none of them is it cultivated to such an extent as in Santo Domingo. Cacao is peculiarly fitted to be a "poor man's crop," as little land and labor are required and, while the trees are growing, corn, bananas and other crops can be raised on the same field. Most of the cacao is raised on small plantations, producing from fifty to one hundred barrels, a barrel being worth about eight dollars. For the preparation and planting of the field of a poor man the whole family turns out and neighbors often come to help, regular planting bees being organized. The larger landowner makes contracts for the preparation of his lands, paying at the rate of $2 or $2.50 a tarea.
The best months for planting cacao are the wet months, which in the Cibao are May and October. Small holes are dug in the earth about three yards apart and three beans placed in each. When the sprouts grow into young trees, two of the three should be cut off, and the best developed allowed to remain; but the countrymen generally permit all three to grow, with resulting dwarfed trees and poor crops. To protect the small plants from the hot sun a yuca or cassava plant is set out next to each one. While the trees are growing, corn is planted between the rows and three or even four crops are obtained in each year. After two years the cacao trees begin to bloom, after three years they begin to give fruit, and their production gradually increases until their eighth year when they reach mature growth. Each tree furnishes about two pounds of cacao per year. On the larger plantations less attention is paid to ancillary crops and the cacao plants are raised in seedbeds, the seedlings being transplanted to the field after six months or a year. When the pods containing the cacao beans are ripe the beans are extracted, soaked in water and then dried in the sun. During the crop season cacao beans are spread on mats before every native hut and in the streets of every town and village in the Cibao, and the sourish smell of the drying bean pervades the air.
The principal cacao region is the Cibao and the upper Seibo plain, and the largest plantation, belonging to the well-known Swiss chocolate manufacturer, Suchard, is situated near Sabana la Mar, on the south side of Samana Bay. The cacao here produced is not of the finest grade, such as that grown in Ecuador, but goes to make the cheaper grades of chocolate.
The ease with which cacao is planted and the profits to be derived from it often cause the small farmers to neglect everything else for cacao and purchase articles of food which they could themselves raise. The consequence is that when the cacao crop fails, there is widespread want and discontent.
Cacao has been exported since 1888, before which time it was grown for local consumption only. For years it led the country's exports, until sugar took first place in 1914. The greater portion of the cacao crop is exported through the port of Sanchez, on Samana Bay. Formerly almost the whole crop went to Europe, Havre being the chief market, but of late years the United States has become one of the principal buyers.
The cultivation of tobacco is confined to the Cibao region, where it was grown by the Indians when the Spaniards landed. It is a crop yielding rapid returns, but cacao has paid so much better that the progress of tobacco culture has been slow. The effort of the countrymen to produce quantity rather than quality has prevented the development of the finer grades and the price paid for Dominican tobacco is low. While the tobacco grown is of inferior quality, there is no reason why it should not be susceptible of improvement as the climatic and soil conditions of the interior valleys are very similar to those of the tobacco regions of Cuba and Porto Rico.
Tobacco is grown mostly by small planters and sold to the large commercial houses of Santiago and Puerto Plata. Practically the entire crop is exported through Puerto Plata. Before the European war the great market for Dominican tobacco was Hamburg. Up to 1907 tobacco was exported only in leaf, but since then a small cigarette industry has developed.
Coffee is another native crop the development of which has been checked by the popularity of cacao. It is also a crop which can be grown with profit on small tracts of land. The coffee bushes flourish in the mountains and are grown under the shade of larger trees. A clearing having been made in the forest, the small coffee trees are planted in rows or irregularly and near each a banana or plantain tree. The latter reach full height within six months and afford shade until guava and other shade trees planted on the field have attained sufficient size. A wait of five years is necessary before the coffee bushes begin to bear, but after that they continue indefinitely every year, the only labor required being that of keeping the plantation clear of brush and picking the berries when they are ripe. The trees grow to a height of six or eight feet; they bloom with a fragrant, white, star-like flower which on withering leaves the green embryo of the berry. When the berry has reached the size of a hazel-nut it turns red and is picked, much of the picking being done by women. The berries are poured into a simple machine which extracts the two coffee beans encased in each berry. The beans are dried in the sun, on the largest plantations in drying machines. They are then transported to the merchants in town, where they are polished in another machine, assorted and bagged for export. The town of Moca owes its name to the fact that the principal coffee plantations lie in its vicinity. Other important coffee districts are Santiago and Bani. About two-thirds of the coffee of the Republic is exported from Puerto Plata.
The coffee of Santo Domingo is of excellent quality. In normal times the greater portion was exported to France and Germany, but most of it now goes to the United States.
With one exception the limitless resources of Santo Domingo with reference to fruit culture have remained untouched. The single exception was the United Fruit Company's banana plantation at Sosua, about ten miles east of Puerto Plata, and even this estate is at present, in consequence of the greater attractiveness of sugar, being converted into a sugar plantation. Otherwise there has been no attempt to raise fruit for export, though the sweet and bitter orange, the lemon, the lime, the grapefruit and the paradoxical sweet lemon, grow wild. Pineapples are raised only for the small home consumption. An obstacle to the cultivation of such fruits at the present time would be the absence of rapid fruit steamers to the United States. The fruits peculiar to the torrid zone all grow in profusion and among them the native is fondest of the juicy mango, the guava, the aguacate or alligator pear, the anon or custard apple, the guanabana or soursop, the mamon or sweetsop, the mamey or marmalade fruit, the nispero or sapodilla and the tamarind. From the large palm-groves about Samana Bay cocoanuts and a little copra are exported, principally to the United States.