Cooperatives

Cooperatives offer the advantage that they buy wet cocoa beans from the farmers and ferment and dry them professionally in specially built stations.

In addition, membership in a cooperative is often associated with advantages for the farmers. Guaranteed, constant and good prices, access to health care and education, help to optimize cultivation, harvest and yield or microcredits. Here we show you some cooperatives that produce cocoa beans from which some chocolates have been made in our shop.

Many of our manufacturers know the people who grow, ferment and dry the cocoa beans personally and have forged close business and friendly ties with them. The cocoa beans for all the chocolates that you can find here come from direct retailers. This means that the cocoa beans are bought directly on the farms or from cooperations that represent between 180 and 4,000 small and micro farmers.

Such cooperatives combine many advantages. They take care of the fermentation and the subsequent drying of the cocoa beans, both processes that are time-consuming and require a lot of experience. This leaves the farmers more time to look after the cocoa trees. Here, too, the farmers often receive support from the cooperatives; it is not uncommon for them to offer further training on topics such as biodiversity, afforestation, harvest planning and waste management. In addition, this system enables a stable and transparent price policy and guarantees the farmers a reliable income and thus stability and independence.

Kokoa Kamili, Tanzania, Morogoro, Kilombero, Mbingu

• fair wages

• Improvement of the quality of cocoa from Tanzania

• Improvement of the economic situation of the rural population

• Cocoa mainly from micro-farms

• Fermentation and drying require a lot of knowledge and time

• Focus on quality rather than quantity

• Cocoa from around 2,000 small farmers, including the Mbingu Sisters, who use the proceeds to finance hospitals, orphanages and schools

• Buy wet cocoa for about 25% above market price, direct payment

• Buy at the Farmgate, at the fermentation station and at collecting stations in the area

• work transparently with certified scales, without a middleman and with a publicly known purchase price

• Only the best quality is bought, fermented and sorted again after drying

• Consistent quality guaranteed

• Everything is logged for constant control and improvement

• mainly Trinitario cocoa, also available in organic form

• The higher prices paid for the cocoa give the farmers independence in their decisions

• 300,000 cuttings distributed since 2015, partly as a donation, partly at a price balanced so that the farmers could buy enough, but not more than they would be able to process

• Coaching on yield and quality by trained cocoa experts
• Transparency
  

Ucayali River Cacao, Peru

• work with approx. 400 small and micro farms
• buy wet cocoa at collection points in the vicinity
• The initiative aims to help farmers break away from cocaine cultivation and instead grow cocoa
• Fermenting and drying so that farmers have more time to take care of other task

ÖKO-Caribe, Dominican Republic, San Francisco de Macoris, Pimentel

• Buy the wet beans from over 180 farmers in the area
• Fermentation, drying, shipping
• founded in 2006
• Quality, transparency, local prosperity
• Strict quality standards
• Cocoa from agroforestry = sustainable mixed farming
• Protection for the sensitive cocoa trees through shade and biodiversity
• Further training in soil and harvest planning, waste management and afforestation
• Better soil fertility in the long term and therefore less clearing

Semuliki Forest Cacao, Bundibugyo, West Uganda

• over 1,000 small farmers, 52% of them women
• Organic quality
• Six collection points for buying fresh cocoa
• Central fermentation facility in Bumate
• hand-picked beans
• Transparent purchase prices

Luker Cacao

 Waslala

PISA

Maya Mountain

Virunga

Cacaotales