Make no mistake: Americans love their chocolate. Projected by the United States Census Bureau to reach $18 billion this year in sales, it’s a commodity on the rise.
And with the increasing popularity of organic farming, fair trade and other sustainability-minded practices, shouldn’t many consumers pay closer attention to where the fondest of confections comes from?
Make no mistake: Americans love their chocolate. Projected by the United States Census Bureau to reach $18 billion this year in sales, it’s a commodity on the rise.
And with the increasing popularity of organic farming, fair trade and other sustainability-minded practices, shouldn’t many consumers pay closer attention to where the fondest of confections comes from?
The Kallari Association, a unified cooperative of over 850 family farmers and producers based in Ecuador’s Amazon region, say yes, they should.
Last Wednesday, Portland State’s Institute for Sustainable Solutions welcomed members of the Kallari to campus. The mission: to provide information about Kallari’s sustainably produced chocolate, complete with a tasting of many types of the world’s dark chocolate.
Leonor Cayapa-Tapuy, a delegate of the Kallari Association, gave a presentation on the stages of Kallari cocoa production. Her colleague, Kallari U.S. distribution manager Judy Logback, provided translation and guided the tasting.
The tasting began with the cacao bean, an almond-shaped bean with a fiber shell and a core of pure cacao. Next came a sampling of two powders, a natural cocoa powder and a cocoa mix, followed by a bit of pure cocoa butter. Twelve unlabeled samples of various brands of dark chocolate were also provided.
The variety ranged from inexpensive, organic brands made from cacao produced in South Africa to high-priced French and Italian chocolates to Kallari’s three purely Ecuadorian chocolate bars.
The hosts provided a wealth of detail about the chocolate’s origin.
One of the Kallari Cooperative’s foremost claims to uniqueness is their chocolate’s single origin. Other brands market themselves as single-origin, but in fact still blend large portions of their product with beans from other regions.
“In Europe, if you see a single-origin chocolate, only 10 percent needs to be from the location of origin,” Logback said.
And with chocolate, origin matters, particularly when it comes to flavor. The World Cocoa Foundation, a non-profit organization that promotes development in cocoa-growing communities, defines Ecuadorian cocoa, for example, as “distinctively fruity with a floral bouquet.”
Attendees ranged from students with academic experience relevant to the chocolate industry, to regular Portlanders with an interest in sustainability.
Bex Sakarias and Min Cai, from the PSU School of Business, found the discussion enlightening. Currently, they’re working with a company based in Madagascar. They remarked that it offered them perspective to hear how others are doing in the field.
“To hear that they have some of the same challenges and opportunities was interesting,” Sakarias said.
Kallari families govern and operate the processes of production and manufacture, which means a greater share of profits go to Kallari producers.
“I’m really happy to see people in Ecuador work in this cooperative to make their own chocolate,” said Cai. “They get a lot of money and value out of selling the chocolate rather than the raw beans.”
Mary Loos, who works in a local convenience store, attended to learn about food and labor organizing.
“It connects to the sustainability education that I get around here,” she said of the tasting.
With chocolate as the third highest-ranked commodity in the world, behind petroleum and coffee, it’s notable that the farmers producing cocoa are among the poorest. The efforts of the Kallari and other South American farmers cooperatives are working to change all of that.
“We, the Kallari, have our own power,” said Capaya-Tapuy. “We can decide where our chocolate goes, and we have the sales points.”
