By Gabriela Albuja At Canopy Bridge we know that meeting suppliers in the field makes a big difference […]
Category: Cacao
By Juliana Splendore In late summer of 2016, Emily Stone, the founder of Uncommon Cacao – an American supplier of […]
Jacob Olander First it was hamburgers, then chocolate and now guacamole. Tropical forests are being relentlessly sacrificed for […]
by Jacob Olander The Ecuadorian Amazon is remarkably easy to get to. In no other of the eight countries of […]
The holidays can bring a welcome change of pace, when we slow down and share time with friends and family. This sharing includes gifts which
On a Saturday afternoon in late September in the Peruvian jungle town of Satipo, Jonatan Ayala Lombardi offers up a chocolate surprise. Jonatan is the general manager of the Satipo Cooperative, which sells hundreds of tons of cacao and coffee from its 620 farmer members from this frontier region where the Andes meld into the Amazon lowlands.
Canopy Bridge founder Marta Echavarría was at the 2015 Casa de Chocolate and Cacao de Oro Awards in Bogotá. On September 18th, Swisscontact, a corporation working in economic development, held their third Casa de Chocolate and Cacao de Oro Awards, showcasing and celebrating the exciting expansion of high quality Colombian cacao.
Last month the World Cocoa Foundation issued a stern statement that the measures taken by the cocoa and chocolate industries and by the United States and West African governments, “have not been sufficient to achieve significant reductions in the number of children working in unacceptable conditions in West Africa, often in circumstances defined as child labor.”
In our last blog, Lourdes Páez explained the history of cocoa in Ecuador, and the challenges and opportunities in its production today. Here, we introduce you to some native Amazonian cocoa producers, and to the hope that proper cocoa production holds for them, as well as for the futures of chocolate and conservation.
Canopy Bridge recently had a chance to sit down with Lourdes Páez, an outstanding social entrepreneur working to enhance appreciation for Ecuador’s excellent cocoa and create more value for farmers of the country’s fine flavor beans. Lourdes heads the Academia del Chocolate, an organization dedicated to training and research to improve the quality, recognition and benefits of fine cocoa, and she recently launched a beautiful book dedicated to Ecuador´s rich cocoa heritage, Ecuador tierra del cacao.36″ height=”111″ />
