With our minds and bodies freshly replenished we started off our second day in Amsterdam from a whole new perspective. Touring the city via a vast network of canals we were treated to a sweeping introduction to many of the important buildings, architectural features, and history of the city. After a brief pause for lunch we got right back to learning with a foot tour with a private guide, enlightening us about many niche facts about the local architecture, political climate, and once again history, especially pertaining to the struggles of the citizenry throughout the period of the Holocaust. The tour came to a close and we were deposited promptly and succinctly at our final location for the day, Cacao & Spice, where we had the chance to taste the fruits of sustainability and equitable production in the international cacao industry.

As we sailed our way through the center of the city’s tanning industry-turned-residential neighborhood a new facet of the canal system came into view. The sides of the waterway were lined with long barges, many decorated and furnished, that served a range of functions though primarily as luxury residences for locals in the area. Originally these canal boats were used to ferry tanned goods and other cargo from the city’s industrial areas to its harbor, once the most important and richest port in the world. In the years since the Netherland’s drift away from a merchants’ maritime empire into the modern day, the barges were left abandoned by the city’s declining production companies. Left untouched for some time, the boats were eventually taken over he 1960s by squatters as a form of shelter for the city’s less fortunate. Local business people began to take note of the rising occupancy of the barges, however, resulting in mass investment and renovations into legitimate housing in the city. In the midst of the contemporary housing crisis in the Netherlands many of these houseboats have sold or are being sold for upwards of a million Euros, displaying a sharp demographic change and highlighting the incredible expense in the city proper.

Breaking for lunch we returned for a tour of the city on foot with a local guide, further enhancing our view of Amsterdam. As we marched from the plaza outside the central station to our company visit for the day we were regaled with notes from lessons on the Dutch school of architecture to the city’s history as a major trade port to the legacy of the Holocaust. Yesterday, May 5th, was Liberation Day, marking the end of the Nazi occupation of the country. Over that period more than 100,000 Jewish citizens, about 10% of the city’s population, were exported and exterminated. Many of the Jewish communities that once thrived within Amsterdam have since been demolished and rebuilt as few to none returned home after the dissolution of the Nazi regime in 1945. We visited several houses and other buildings with placards commemorating those who came before and were lost, forever marking a darkest hour in our history and warning us of the burden such atrocities continue to bear in their wake. In particular the work of Alida Bosshardt was quite striking. A member of the Salvation Army, Bosshardt used her position as a manager of a daycare to save around 75 children from deportation to concentration camps during the Holocaust. Many Jewish families with young children given notice of their removal would alert Bosshardt with little more than a not bearing the child’s name before she would take the kids by bike to the countryside where they might hide amongst participating families in the countryside. Many more markers displayed the heroism of the period’s activists, resistance fighters, and victims, proudly announcing the courage and resiliency of many during the city’s occupation.

With the rise of the spice trade in Oceania and the Indian Ocean, the Dutch East Indies Company formed to combat the Portuguese monopoly of the hyper-expensive goods. The establishment of merchants in Amsterdam not only built the foundation of the city we recognize today, but can be considered the birth of modern-day capitalism with the inception of the world’s first stock exchange. Throughout several centuries the companies headquartered in the Netherlands as well as its useful geographic location positioned the Netherlands and more specifically Amsterdam to become the busiest and richest trade port on the face of the Earth. While the role of international trade has diminished from the near monopoly it saw in the 17th and 18th centuries, cross and multi-national commerce still has a major hand in many of the products we enjoy today, such as chocolate.

Finishing our tour at the storefront for Cacao & Spice, we were treated not only to a delectable array of high-quality chocolates produced both in the Netherlands and origin countries (from the same nation supplying the raw cacao) but also a lesson in the history of the cacao industry, equitable practice in the modern day, and sustainable harvesting and production methods. One of the most important facets of the presentation was the role the soil and nature surrounding the cacao beans’ growth on the experience of the final product. Each piece was very rich and distinct in flavor, despite largely sharing the exact same ingredients, often simply cacao and sugar. Cacao used for export is typically mixed with beans from various plots and environments, muddying the individuality of the overall product and decreasing the quality. At Cacao & Spice the beans were sourced specifically from single origin sources, that being singular plots per shipment of bean. This method both retains the flavor of the land on which the chocolate was grown as well as aiding local independent and smaller scale cacao farmers compete with the often larger international extraction companies. In addition, all procurement of cacao was conducted on a farmer-to-vendor basis, skipping the veritable excise of middlemen and producing a fairer and more comprehensive price to the farmers than fair-trade, the current standard practice and misnomer. The Cacao & Spice method also encourages polyculture sustainable practice in the cacao farming, once again leading to richer flavors and products in comparison to its competitors. Working as a vendor of sustainable chocolates, the small shop also produces specialty chocolate in house, bringing in revenue at multiple stages of the supply chain. This nature allows the shop to be quite versatile in the market, offering many amenities and features that, while possibly available among their competitors, is split between them, thus filling the gap in the effective market. Cacao & Spice capitalizes on the perfect convergence of many niches within its industry to package a neat, ethical, and unique experience for customers, pushing for both an edge in the local Dutch market and a greater degree of equity and sustainability for cacao producers at large.

Tomorrow we wake up early to tour the auction warehouse and fields of tulips for the Netherlands’ blossoming and colorful tulip industry, with a taste of the Dutch countryside to parse the visits. We’re reaching the end of the peak season for tulips in the Netherlands, and I’m incredibly excited to see both the sprawling fields and behind-the-scenes infrastructure in person.

– Duncan Dockstader