Jacob Margolis
covers science, with a focus on environmental stories and disasters, as well as investigations and accountability.
Published December 18, 2023 2:39 PM
Cacao fruits are seen growing on cacao trees on a traditional cacao farm on Dec. 2, 2021 in Cuernavaca, Colombia.
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Jan Sochor
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Topline:
Who would ever decide to keep highly temperamental trees comfortable at a specific temperature and humidity for multiple years, pollinate thousands of small flowers by hand, ferment, roast, winnow and grind beans into a perfectly smooth paste, all for a few wonderful bars of chocolate? A couple of people down the street from the LAist studios, it turns out.
The hardest part: Because cacao trees are usually pollinated by gnats that don't exist in SoCal, each flower has to be pollinated by hand.
You can do it: Why not give it a go? We've got more information on what can be your most ambitious DIY project.
Anytime you snap a bar of chocolate, sink your teeth into a Reese's or sip Swiss Miss from a mug, the cacao that makes up the best part of each of those sweet treats likely came from within 20 degrees of the equator. As far north as Vietnam and Hawaii, and as far south as Madagascar and Bolivia.
View of the oldest cocoa tree planted in Ghana in 1879 at Tetteh Quarshie cocoa farm in Mampon on June 14, 2019 in Eastern Region of Ghana.
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Cristina Aldehuela
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AFP
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Theobroma cacao, the trees from which chocolate comes, are picky about their environment. They prefer warm and humid conditions with a lot of rain, thriving in partial shade where they’re afforded a whole lot of protection from strong wind and sun.
All of which makes the environment here in Southern California — dry, windy, at times both brutally hot and cold — less than ideal for them if you’re going to try and grow them outside. Which is why I was surprised and thrilled when I found out that there are multiple people who've figured out how to both grow cacao and make chocolate from the beans nearby.
After talking through the process with three different people, it’s not easy by any means, but maybe if you’re up to it you too can give it a go. I know I’ll be trying in my backyard (with the proper greenhouse setup) sometime soon.
Think of this less as a how-to guide and more so a post meant to get you excited to go on an experimental cacao journey of your own.
The intrepid DIY-ers
One of the things I love about the rare fruit-growing community here in Southern California is that it attracts all kinds of different people interested in ridiculous experimentation in less-than-ideal environments.
When it comes to cacao trees, I found two groups taking on the challenge of going from dirt to bar.
Cacao trees growing in steel drums at the Pacific Light & Hologram lab.
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Samanta Helou Hernandez
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LAist
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The first group is down the street from the LAist studios in Pasadena, in a nondescript warehouse. Seamus Blackley, physicist and creator of the Xbox, is growing several trees with his creative partner Asher Sefami, a trained microbiologist. They took on the process as distraction to get their minds off of the other super-secret engineering work they're doing at the same location.
Meanwhile, up in Santa Barbara, Mike Orlando, the owner of Twenty-Four Blackbirds, has been making boutique chocolate since 2009. He recently began importing cacao pods, sprouting the beans and growing his own trees in a nearby greenhouse.
So, what can we learn from them?
Step 1: Growing the trees
First, you need to get your hands on some trees.
You can pick them up from rare fruit nurseries in L.A., like Mimosa, or you can sprout your own.
An Afro-Colombian farmer separates pulpy cacao seeds from a cacao pod during a harvest on a traditional cacao farm on Dec. 1, 2021 in Cuernavaca, Colombia.
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Jan Sochor
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Getty Images
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If you get your hands on some fresh pods, pull out the seeds, wash off the pulp, peel off the outside skin and stick them along with a moist paper towel in a plastic bag. Keep them in a warm environment, somewhere between 80 to 90 degrees, and wait.
Cacao seeds sprouting.
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Mike Orlando
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Twenty-Four Blackbirds Chocolate
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Each pod has 30 to 50 seeds, so you'll have a lot of opportunities.
Cacao plants that've been sprouted from seed.
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Mike Orlando
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Twenty-Four Blackbirds Chocolate
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Once you have your cacao tree, you need to plant it.
Sefami stuck theirs in oil drums with standard potting soil.
Cacao trees growing in steel drums at the Pacific Light & Hologram lab.
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Samanta Helou Hernandez
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LAist
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Orlando planted his in a greenhouse.
One of the most critical components of this process is controlling the environment the trees live in, as they prefer moist and warm conditions with dappled light.
Orlando shoots to keep his greenhouse from 60 to 80 degrees at about 70% humidity, though he's seen the trees survive in 40-degree weather.
Cacao trees kept warm and moist in a greenhouse.
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Mike Orlando
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Twenty-Four Blackbirds Chocolate
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In Blackley's climate-controlled lab, a nearby water jet keeps the humidity up and grow lights above the trees give them at least 12 hours of sunlight. They had a problem with aphids, so they tried to remedy the issue with thousands of ladybugs before eventually just using pesticides.
For fertilizer, Orlando sprays the leaves with a kelp mixture and sprinkles Miracle Grow Osmocote every three months or so, depending on how they look.
As you'll find if you start growing plants, a lot of it's a feel thing.
Step 2: Pollinating tiny flowers (the hardest part)
In the wild, cacao trees are often pollinated by biting midges, which don't exist here. So, you'll need to pollinate each tiny flower by hand, using pollen from different plants.
Orlando hasn't quite gotten to this point in the process, but Sefami and Blackley have, after about two years of trying to figure it out.
"The first pod we got, we were through the moon," said Sefami. "And it got to about the size of a Tic Tac and then it just falls off. And it was like ... it was one of the most painful moments."
Cacao flowers grow on trees at the Pacific Light & Hologram lab.
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Samanta Helou Hernandez
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LAist
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"The hard part is when you have tweezers and you're trying to decide if this plant and this plant are different enough genetically, they might work. And you spend half an hour pollinating, and maybe it works or maybe it doesn't, and you don't know what's going on, and the tree is dying, and you're not sure why," said Blackley.
Asher Zelig Sefami pulls pollen from a cacao flower.
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Samanta Helou Hernandez
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LAist
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"Basically you need to take the flower apart into its constituent parts. We remove the pollen and then we have to rub it on the other flowers in a way that just touches where it needs to go,“ said Sefami.
"The flower needs to be at just the right stage of development. Within about a day, they fall off. It’s really hard to get it right."
Cacao pods grow on a tree at the Pacific Light & Hologram lab.
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Samanta Helou Hernandez
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LAist
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Turns out the biting midges are quite effective, said Blackley.
Step 3: Harvest and ferment the beans
If you get to the point where you're harvesting the pods, next you've got to ferment them.
Blackley and Sefami pulled the beans out of the pods smushed them into a bowl and stuck them in a proofing box.
Cacao beans fermenting.
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Seamus Blackley
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They kept the beans at about 83 degrees Fahrenheit, around 80% humidity and mixed them once a day. There was so much microbial activity that the temperature of the beans climbed to 115 degrees before dropping down over the course of about a week.
"At first it smells ... doughy and bready. And then the fermentation process gets taken over by bacteria that produce essentially vinegar, so it starts to smell kind of sharp," said Blackley.
"And then one day you open up the fermentation chamber and it starts to smell like chocolate. It's completely strange."
After they were done fermenting, they dried them to 3% moisture to get them ready for roasting.
Step 4: Roast, grind and temper the cacao
While you can purchase all sorts of different specialty roasting equipment, Orlando recommends you just throw them into your oven at about 250 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes until they start to smell like brownies.
Then, separate the nibs from the shells, blend them in a spice grinder and then grind them into as fine a liquid as you can get them to in a mortar and pestle. This is when you'll add your sugar — 30% by weight will give you 70% dark chocolate.
Alternatively, you can purchase a wet grinder, which uses stone wheels to pulverize the cacao into a smooth chocolate liquor.
"If that was your first time making chocolate, you'd be pretty impressed. It tastes pretty good," said Orlando.
Step 5: Make the bars
Finally, you can temper your chocolate, which gives a bar its characteristic snap when you bite into it.
A bar of finished chocolate.
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Mike Orlando
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Twenty-Four Blackbirds Chocolate
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You then pour it into molds, wait for it to harden and enjoy.
Step 6: Taste the chocolate
If you get this far, you've probably since spent years of effort and thousands of dollars for something you could've purchased at the store for about $12. And we should be friends because it's the kind of absolutely insane experimentation I love.
"I'll tell you, growing chocolate from seed is quite an adventure, but it's the kind of thing you should do in your life. Don't you want to know how to do that? Make chocolate from dirt? Come on," said Blackley.
The final product from Blackley and Sefami.
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Samanta Helou Hernandez
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LAist
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So how did their chocolate taste?
Absolutely delicious! It was fruity with notes of cinnamon and I could've kept eating it. Though, considering the investment each square was probably worth its weight in gold, they only gave me a tiny piece.
If you want to just buy already-made chocolate, you can also check out Twenty-Four Blackbirds in Santa Barbara.
The machine on the left keeps the chocolate in temper so employees can fill molds for chocolate truffles at Twenty-Four Blackbirds in Santa Barbara.
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Mike Orlando
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Twenty-Four Blackbirds Chocolate
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Resources for DIY-ers
This is far from a comprehensive guide, but if you do go on a dirt-to-bar chocolate journey, there are some great resources out there to guide you through the chocolate making part in particular.
Chocolate Alchemy is a reliable resource with links to equipment suitable for a DIY-er.
Kavish Harjai
was in the LAist studios listening to the forum Thursday night.
Published September 3, 2026 7:50 PM
L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and Councilmember Nithya Raman separately explain their environmental positions at a mayoral forum held Thursday at L.A. Trade Tech in downtown Los Angeles.
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LAist
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Topline:
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass painted herself as a proven fighter for environmental justice issues. Her challenger, L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman, said progress on environmental goals has stalled in City Hall.
Key topics: The candidates each had about 45 minutes to individually answer questions from Erin Stone, an LAist senior reporter focused on climate and environment.
Here are some of the topics they covered:
Extreme heat
Emergency preparedness and recovery
Protecting communities from pollution
Water
Public transit
LAist will have more coverage and analysis of the conversations Friday morning.
Topline:
Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass described herself as a proven fighter for environmental justice issues. Her challenger, L.A. City Councilmember Nithya Raman, said progress on environmental goals has stalled in City Hall.
Key topics: The candidates each had about 45 minutes to individually answer questions from Erin Stone, an LAist senior reporter focused on climate and environment.
Ahead of election, Trump admin still has big plans
By Jude Joffe-Block | NPR
Published September 3, 2026 6:43 PM
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Scott Olson
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Getty Images
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Topline:
The Trump administration is taking steps to advance a mysterious and unprecedented project to compile state-by-state lists of people it has decided are eligible citizens over the age of 18 who can vote in the upcoming midterm election.
About the timing: Trump officials will no longer meet its own deadline to publish that information on a portal on Friday, which is 60 days before Election Day.
Where things stand: Department of Justice attorneys told opposing counsel in two separate lawsuits that instead of meeting the Sept. 4 deadline, they would give 48-hours notice to plaintiffs' counsel before the state citizenship portal was launched, according to recent court filings.
Why this matters: The U.S. has never attempted to create a comprehensive list of American citizens before this administration. Maintaining voter lists is the responsibility of states, not the federal government, as the Constitution dictates that states control elections. But President Trump has repeatedly taken steps to try to exert executive control over elections.
The Trump administration is taking steps to advance a mysterious and unprecedented project to compile state-by-state lists of people it has decided are eligible citizens over the age of 18 who can vote in the upcoming midterm election. But it will no longer meet its own deadline to publish that information on a portal on Friday, which is 60 days before Election Day.
Department of Justice attorneys told opposing counsel in two separate lawsuits that instead of meeting the Sept. 4 deadline, they would give 48-hours notice to plaintiffs' counsel before the state citizenship portal was launched, according to recent court filings.
The U.S. has never attempted to create a comprehensive list of American citizens before this administration. Maintaining voter lists is the responsibility of states, not the federal government, as the Constitution dictates that states control elections. But President Trump has repeatedly taken steps to try to exert executive control over elections.
The basis for the federal government creating state citizenship lists is an executive order Trump signed on March 31. A lower court had blocked implementation of key parts of that executive order in 23 states and Washington, D.C., but the Supreme Court stayed that injunction late last month, opening the door for the plan to be implemented after all.
The March 31 executive order directs U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Social Security Administration to create "State Citizenship Lists" of individuals the agencies believe are citizens in each state, and send those lists to state officials "no fewer than 60 days before each regularly scheduled Federal election."
The next section of the executive order says the U.S. attorney general will prioritize investigating and prosecuting state and local officials who issue federal ballots to anyone not eligible to vote.
"States here have a strong incentive to actually use these lists to try to avoid federal investigation," said Jules Torti, counsel at the nonprofit Protect Democracy, in an interview with NPR. "But we know that these lists are going to be based on really inaccurate data. So the risk of disenfranchisement here is really, really palpable."
The privacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center, along with individual voters, filed a motion Thursday asking a federal judge in Maryland to block the administration from creating the citizenship lists and publishing them on a portal. Specifically, they seek to block a June 8 implementation memo authored by USCIS director Joseph Edlow that outlines the plan.
The motion, which was brought by Protect Democracy, along with another nonprofit legal group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, argues the administration's plans to share Americans' personal data between agencies and then disseminate the data to states violates multiple federal laws, including the Privacy Act, the Social Security Act and the Administrative Procedures Act. Under the Privacy Act, federal agencies must give the public 30 days notice and the opportunity to comment before they collect and disseminate Americans' personal data for a new purpose.
The EPIC lawsuit also argues the government does not have access to accurate, up-to-date information on American citizens, especially those who move frequently, have changed their names, or are foreign-born. For example, Social Security's citizenship data often isn't updated when people naturalize, and the SAVE data system, operated by USCIS, frequently doesn't include records for people who became citizens as minors when their parents naturalized.
Torti said it is "deeply concerning" that the administration is still planning to go ahead with the creation of citizenship lists but is no longer going to meet the deadline, since that means the lists will be completed even closer to Election Day.
"It means additional chaos, additional confusion for the state election officials and just for voters," Torti said. "And I think that's the point. The point here is to create chaos in advance of the election."
Neither the Department of Justice, nor the Department of Homeland Security, which is tasked with compiling the citizenship lists, responded to NPR's request for comment.
The June 8 implementation memo stated that the portal for state election officials would be available around June 30 and a second portal where citizens could check their information would be available at a later date – but that deadline passed without further updates.
The federal government has secured a domain for the state citizenship lists portal. While the portal is not currently online, it was briefly live in recent days with a landing page that said "Coming Soon," according to court filings.
Lawyers representing Democratic party groups that had challenged the March 31 executive order in a separate lawsuit filed in April, accused the administration in a recent filing of failing to notify the court or the parties about its plans to move forward with the state citizenship portal. They asked the judge to require the federal government to give immediate updates about their plans to implement the executive order.
This latest legal battle over the administration's plans to compile state citizenship lists comes as the Department of Homeland Security is ramping up its efforts to analyze state voter rolls with the goal of identifying potential noncitizens who are registered to vote. Previous audits have found instances of noncitizens casting ballots to be incredibly rare.
Additionally, last week, ICE published a request for information on a federal procurement site seeking vendors who can compile public voter rolls and voter history files from all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and U.S. territories, "to support Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) fraud detection and data segmentation activities."
NPR's Hansi Lo Wang contributed reporting to this story. Copyright 2026 NPR
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A group of California lawmakers called on federal officials to halt and reject a proposed land exchange in Yosemite National Park that would allow a private developer to take control of a strip of land in the park for an access road to the park’s main attractions.
About the proposed land exchange: The proposal was first reported by news outlet NOTUS, which published a story last week alleging that members of the Trump administration were meeting with representatives of Kingsbarn Realty Capital, a private equity group that owns an 83-acre parcel next to the park. In an email to KQED, Kingsbarn’s lawyer Lanny J. Davis confirmed the group is pursuing the land exchange to build a new access road from its property to the park.
Why it matters: A bipartisan group of 61 state legislators led by Assemblymember Greg Wallis, a Republican who represents Riverside and San Bernardino counties argues that the proposed land exchange is counter to the mission of the National Park Service and the founding of Yosemite in 1864, which set aside the start of the park for public use and protection for the first time in the history of the federal government.
A group of California lawmakers called on federal officials to halt and reject a proposed land exchange in Yosemite National Park that would allow a private developer to take control of a strip of land in the park for an access road to the park’s main attractions.
The letter to Department of the Interior Secretary Doug Burgum on Wednesday was signed by a bipartisan group of 61 state legislators led by Assemblymember Greg Wallis, a Republican who represents Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
“Republicans and Democrats from both houses of the Legislature are standing together because some things are bigger than politics,” Wallis said in a statement. “Yosemite is not a subdivision. It is not a bargaining chip. And it is not for sale. Secretary Burgum and the administration should put an end to this proposal.”
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum (center) visited the Tunnel Tops in San Francisco in 2025 after he and then-Attorney General Pam Bondi toured Alcatraz ahead of their announcement to reopen the former federal prison.
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Katie DeBenedetti
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KQED
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The group argued that the proposed land exchange is counter to the mission of the National Park Service and the founding of Yosemite in 1864, which set aside the start of the park for public use and protection for the first time in the history of the federal government.
“What is being proposed now runs directly against that founding principle, more than a century and a half later,” the letter states.
It continues later: “Our national parks belong equally to every American. They are not the Department’s to trade away, and they are not for sale.”
The proposal was first reported by news outlet NOTUS, which published a story last week alleging that members of the Trump administration were meeting with representatives of Kingsbarn Realty Capital, a private equity group that owns an 83-acre parcel next to the park. In an email to KQED, Kingsbarn’s lawyer Lanny J. Davis confirmed the group is pursuing the land exchange to build a new access road from its property to the park.
Previous owners have pushed for the same deal since the early 2000s and failed in court.
State Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park), who signed on to the letter, called the proposal “indefensible,” and said he’s looking at state laws to ensure a similar proposal could never slip through.
“If the Trump administration can’t defend this publicly in broad daylight, then they shouldn’t be doing it,” he said.
Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Marin) told KQED’s Forum on Wednesday that he’s worried there isn’t enough opposition among his Republican colleagues in Congress to stop the Trump administration’s efforts.
“I have not seen a single Republican colleague willing to stand up to Donald Trump when he decides that he’s just going to do something,” Huffman said. “So that is my concern, that he just plows ahead with this — even if it has dubious legal authority, or even if it’s an open violation of the law. He’s doing stuff like that anyway. And in this Congress, there’s no one here to stop him.”
In a statement to KQED, state Sen. Marie Alvarado-Gil (R-Modesto), whose district includes parts of Yosemite, said she will “keep pressing the Department [of the Interior] for a clear answer that this exchange will not proceed.”
“The secretive backroom land-exchange scheme has gotten everyone’s attention,” said Neal Desai, senior Pacific regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association. “I can’t recall another issue — and I’ve been working in the conservation space for over a couple of decades — where the response has been this sharp and so one-sided that this is a terrible idea that should not happen.”
The backlash comes at a turbulent time for National Park Service employees, who have faced layoffs,staffing cuts and fear of retaliation for speaking up against Trump administration policies since the start of the second Trump administration.
Some former employees have also raised concerns about a potential reorganization of the National Park Service, according to a separate letter sent to Burgum’s office Wednesday. According to an email seen by KQED, park superintendents have been asked to attend in-person regional meetings in September — with no clear agenda beyond discussing “agency priorities, our FY 2026 outlook, and other matters important to the work ahead.”
The letter to Burgam, signed by 20 retired parks superintendents warns: “An ill-advised and hastily planned reorganization could dismantle that structure, putting our parks — and those who visit them — at great risk.”
Emily Thompson, executive director of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, which organized the letter, said the email about regional meetings “raises some alarm bells.”
“The Park Service is already operating from a difficult place, from a place of crisis,” she said. “And any additional cuts, any movements or actions that would further jeopardize the capacity of the folks that are left, that’s concerning. It’s worrying, and it’ll have a devastating impact on the Park Service.”
Among the letter’s signatories is Don Neubacher, retired Yosemite superintendent, who has been a vocal advocate for parks amid the Trump administration’s changes.
Thompson said she’s worried parks leaders will be stretched even further than they already are, and local decision-making over parks could be in jeopardy.
“Morale is low,” Thompson said. “It’s a hard time to be a federal employee. Anything that … contributes to this culture of fear, it’s just not acceptable.”
A file photo of an East Village restaurant that was vandalized on Thursday, June 6, 2024.
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Long Beach Post
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Topline:
Long Beach is offering up to $1,500 for local business owners and landlords to equip their storefronts with safety measures like cameras, floodlights, alarms and point-of-sale systems.
More details: Businesses with storefronts of 1,500 square feet or less may receive grants of up to $750, while businesses between 1,500 and 5,000 square feet are eligible for up to $1,500.
How it works: The funds will be provided as a reimbursement after eligible security improvements are installed. Grants will be given out until funds are exhausted.
Read on... for more on how to qualify for these grants in Long Beach.
Long Beach is offering up to $1,500 for local business owners and landlords to equip their storefronts with safety measures like cameras, floodlights, alarms and point-of-sale systems.
The grant program is accepting online applications now. You can apply here.
Businesses with storefronts of 1,500 square feet or less may receive grants of up to $750, while businesses between 1,500 and 5,000 square feet are eligible for up to $1,500.
Nonprofit organizations are eligible as well, and landlords can apply on behalf of commercial storefronts that are vacant or occupied. Franchises can also receive the grant.
To qualify, a business must:
Have an active business license for a storefront within the city
Be independently owned and operated (franchises are eligible)
Be currently open and active for business
Earn no more than $5 million in annual gross revenue
Hold “active” status with the California Secretary of State for corporations, limited liability companies and limited partnerships
The funds will be provided as a reimbursement after eligible security improvements are installed. Grants will be given out until funds are exhausted.
It’s a great idea, according to Edwin Jara, who manages a pet store in Belmont Heights and was on the receiving end of a break-in earlier this year.
His store had security measures already in place — two cameras and an alarm system — but even that wasn’t enough to deter a masked burglar who grabbed $1,000 cash and a handful of dog treats.
Despite having footage of the burglar, Jara said police haven’t been able to catch the person and that a detective never responded after he filed a police report.
The grant program is being paid for with $350,000 from the city’s Redvelopment Agency along with $50,000 from Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn’s office.
“Our local small businesses are part of the fabric of our neighborhoods, and when business owners feel unsafe, the whole community feels it,” Hahn said in a statement.
In a statement, Mayor Rex Richardson said the program is a “direct investment in the hardworking business owners who make our commercial corridors vibrant and welcoming.”
Jara said he would consider applying for a grant if the city could send someone to help him and the store’s owner fill out the application.
He was offered a separate grant to replace a glass door the burglar smashed, but the store’s owner opted not to fill out the application.
“There was a lot of stuff that we needed to do, and I don’t have a lot of that information,” Jara said.
