The spitting is everything. Cacao has peculiar rain-forest dependency. If the pod is not removed, it shrivels and the seeds die. It needs to tempt whatever happens by—monkey, man, squirrel, rat—to stop, wrestle it off its stubby stalk, break it, drink the nectar, eat the pupl (or try to), and cough out the seeds. No creature likes the seeds; the fruit's future is in its immediate ejection. The seeds that end up on the rain-forest floor sprout within hours of exposure to the air.

—Bill Buford, "Extreme Chocolate," The New Yorker, October 29, 2007.