This Chocolate Collective Is Giving Families Hope in the Amazon Rainforest
This Chocolate Collective Is Giving Families Hope in the Amazon Rainforest
January 24, 2017 / 12:00 pm
BY CLARISSA WEI
Cristina Cerda has spent her entire life in the Ecuadorian Amazon Rainforest. She lives off of the land, where she cultivates corn, yucca, palm trees, and 300 cacao trees of four different varieties in a horticultural plot known as a chacra.
A chacra mimics the growth patterns of the jungle. It is a multi-layered agroforestry system, and plants are grown in conjunction with one another. There are no monocrops, pesticides, or added fertilizers. An irrigation system is not needed; being in a rainforest has its advantages.
Cerda is one of the founding members of Kallari, an Ecuadorian chocolate collective owned completely by cacao-producing families in the Amazon Rainforest. The collective started in the 1997 with American aid and less than 50 families. Today it provides 850 indigenous Kichwa families with a source of reliable income.
Every year Cerda grows and harvest about 91 kilograms of cacao. It is picked up directly from her farm and sent to Quito, where it is processed into chocolate bars and then distributed around the world. The factory churns out bars that range from 60 to 85 percent cacao and flavored with different ingredients like roasted coffee, lime, ginger, Andean salt, and wild cinnamon. From there, the product is distributed locally and to international markets in the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Scandinavia, and Japan.
More, with photos:
https://munchies.vice.com/en/articles/this-chocolate-collective-is-giving-families-hope-in-the-amazon-rainforest
