The cocoa beans we source from Ecuador add pleasant bitter notes and character to the chocolate taste of our Finest Belgian Chocolate recipes.
HOW WE DIRECTLY SOURCE FROM FARMER COOPERATIVES IN ECUADOR
Cocoa is one of Ecuador’s main export products. Yet more importantly, the country stands out for being the prime global exporter of fine flavour cocoa, and produces around 60% of the world’s fine flavour cocoa.
The cocoa sector employs 5% of the active population in rural areas and provides a fundamental base of family livelihoods around the Coast, Andes foothills and the Amazon area. Yet, contrary to West Africa, where most farms take an average about 3ha, farm size in Ecuador is in general a lot bigger and organised differently, involving around 150,000 families in the entire country. Most, approximately 70%, are small-scale producers, 20% being medium and 10% large producers.
We source cocoa in partnership with different local buying organisations who are committed to sustainable cocoa cultivation, and who have coaching programmes in place to improve farmer income and working conditions for farmers.
TRACEABILITY
The buying organisations we source from, keep track of every bag of cocoa beans bought. They can allocate them to the farm where the beans were grown. To date, we cannot process all the data yet, since much of the registration is kept handwritten and not yet digitalised.