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While their cacao beans were a key ingredient in a hugely profitable global industry, the Kichwa community of Ecuador received only a small benefit from their sale.
The bulk of their crops economic value was extracted by a host of middlemen who bought the beans from individual families for just 20 cents a pound, took them to the port of Guayaquil and shipped them across the globe where they were often mixed with similarly sourced beans from Africa. The Kichwa, whose most convenient transportation was often via canoe, had no incentive to bring their harvested cacao beans to one central location where they could be sorted and sold for quality. The result was a lower price for their community and lower quality product when the beans were used to make chocolate for the global market.
Meanwhile, the Kichwa were already struggling with a host of interlopers illegally logging their hardwood trees, drilling their oil, and mining their gold. They needed a steady income to control their economic destiny and protect their natural resources. They knew there was a strong international demand for their cacao, but they lacked both access to the global market and the local infrastructure to process the product.
Then, in 1997, a foundation promoting biodiversity in Ecuador began to help the Kichwa consolidate and sell their cacao harvest themselves. By 2002, with some volunteer assistance, they were able to transport their first harvest of dry cacao beans 250 miles over the Andes to the port in Guayaquil. By uniting the harvest and finding a direct market, the Kichwa managed to more than double their price to 48 cents a pound. Other help came when Dr. Robert Steinberg, a renowned chocolate expert offered consultation on the importance of local fermentation. He advised that the cacao beans be fermented and dried onsite during the first 5-10 days in order to cultivate the nuanced nut-flavors, and floral qualities that would later appear in the finished product. Other artisanal practices established by the Kichwa included attentive raking of the beans during the drying process, a step commonly ignored when beans are purchased at the lowest possible price and then quickly shipped for production elsewhere.
In developing sustainable products that would also be priced according to sustainable values, the Kichwa also complied with the standards for organic certification. This would mean that they would earn an additional premium for both their artisanal methods and their desire to produce a chocolate free from pesticide residue.
Today the Kichwa’s collective of over 850 families is the only farmer’s cooperative in the world that harvests, markets and enjoys all profits from its own line of organic chocolate. The Kallari chocolate bars sold at ethical grocers throughout the Bay Area offer chocolate lovers the subtle flavors of several unique cacao varieties found on Kichwa land including the fruity Cacao Amazónico, the nutty Criollo, and a variety called Cacao Nacional which adds a unique floral hint and a subtle note of pepper to the blend. |
