Organic, Artisanal, Fair Trade: What does it really mean?
Let’s talk about labels.
Not only do we grow our own cacao here at Sueño de Vida, we process, export and sell it. I can tell you our cacao is organic, artisanal, and direct trade, because it is. It says so on our label.
But in a world awash with labels and advertising, you would be right to ask: What do those words even mean? Well, here’s what they mean to us.
A Step beyond Organic
When I made the transition from urban yoga teacher to regenerative farmer (which is a whole story in itself), needless to say I had much to learn. But when I took a good look into what the “organic’’ label on food really means, I have to say I was a bit disappointed.
See, as far as regulatory bodies are concerned, “organic” just means that a food was grown without chemicals (herbicide, fungicide, or pesticides). Or in some cases, like “organic” potatoes in the US, it means they’re grown with only a minimum of chemical applications. Yes, really.
Organic is a definition by negation. It doesn’t require that growers do anything positive to regenerate the ecosystem where they are farming. The only requirement is that chemicals are not used.
Sure, most of us agree that food grown without chemicals is better for us and for the planet. But what about the idea of growing food regeneratively, growing food in a way that actually contributes to the health of the ecosystem?
It can be done. We are doing it here.
We never spray our trees with chemicals of any kind. And we don’t use any chemical fertilizers in the soil. But we also go well above and beyond these basic requirements of an “organic” label.
At Sueño de Vida, we have planted thousands of trees of over a hundred different species in a mixed agroforestry system that mimics a natural forest. We feed and recycle nutrients in the soil instead of exhausting it. Rather than cutting down forest to make more room to farm, we grow forests that are farms — food forests.
Besides our own farming practices, we work to educate other people about the common sense of regenerative agriculture. Most of the world’s food is not grown organically. The large chemical companies like Bayer-Monsanto have done a thorough job at convincing governments and NGOs to import their products and practices. Now there is some backlash happening, but the vast majority of food globally is cultivated with chemicals.
Walk into any “agricultural distributor” in the developing world and that is what you will find on the shelves: chemicals and engineered fungicide-treated seed. So it’s not surprising that most of the farmers we talk to believe that “crops are grown with chemicals.”
At the beginning of the year, I brought on two teenage employees, Kevin and Yandre, from the nearby pueblo to help me in the cacao field and with processing the beans. They call me patrona which I admit I like, though I’m hardly a patrona in my tattered clothes and muddy boots. When they ask me why I don’t use herbicides or fungicides. I don’t say because chemicals are bad. I say I’d rather pay YOU instead of the chemical companies. When they ask me why we plant banana trees with our cacao I show them how we save money by using the big banana leaves as mulch. Look, I say, the banana leaves shade out weeds and fertilize the soil, FOR FREE.
I don’t find it effective, or diplomatic, to tell them chemicals are "bad for the earth." They know that. But when a farmer (like these kids’ dads) sells a raw agricultural product for pennies it’s hard for him to care when he’s afraid productivity will drop and he can’t pay his bills. So I keep records of our harvests. I show Kevin and Yandre how we’ve increased our production using regenerative methods. How much we don’t spend on chemicals. I know if I want to get them to think seriously about "permaculture" or my gringa loca ideas I have to show them that they work for regular people too.
When I have their attention, I talk about the insects and soil life and how they help the trees. I show them that when banana leaves are digested by soil microbes they become fertilizer. Day by day, I show them a bigger picture. Sometimes they glance at each other like "what is she talking about?" Admittedly, my Spanish is riddled with sometimes hilarious mistakes. But sometimes they nod and look thoughtful. Those are my favorite days, and theirs too.
So friends, when you have the time, make it a point to find local farmers and food producers that don’t settle for “organic.” Find and support growers actively making a bigger difference.
Keeping the "art" in Artisanal
Unlike organic, there’s no official definition for artisanal. But I think for most people the word artisanal implies that a good was crafted or made mostly by hand. I can tell you exactly what artisanal means when applied to our cacao label.
We tend to our cacao trees ourselves and with a few chosen helpers. We hand-prune the branches, clear weeds and mosses by hand, and check for any signs of disease.
We hand harvest our cacao in the field to mark the rise of the new moon and the full moon each month. These are the traditionally auspicious times for harvest and it keeps us on a good twice-monthly harvesting schedule!
After removing the seeds and pulp, we place the scooped out pods at the base of the tree to return to the soil. The pods provide a place for pollinators to breed and then break down to feed the soil.
I personally watch over the harvested cacao beans during the fermentation. Proper fermenting time and temperature is key to producing flavorful beans.
After fermenting, we spread the beans out in a simple solar tunnel to sun-dry here at the farm which greatly enhances the flavor profile. Like wine, cacao picks up subtle flavors and aromas from whatever is nearby. Our fermenting and drying area includes an abundant variety of trees — lemon, lime, orange, guava, banana, and coffee among many others.
With Kevin and and Yandre’s help, we shell the beans by hand to keep them as intact as possible and ensure they retain both flavor and nutrition. Our beans are not those machine pulverized nibs that deteriorate quickly in quality. Stored in a reasonably cool and dry place, whole bean cacao will remain fresh and potent for up to a year.
Direct Trade makes a Difference
Finally, maybe you’ve seen the words fair trade on a label and wondered exactly what that means. A product that is labeled fair trade means that the producer is doing a good job to ensure that everyone along the supply chain is getting paid fairly and treated decently. It’s a very good step forward.
Direct trade means you are buying directly from the producer. Most if not all of the supply chain is contained to one person or micro-enterprise. That’s what we’re doing here at Sueño de Vida. The chain starts with us and ends with you.
How we went from cacao farmers to micro-enterprise is a pretty interesting story that began just a little over a year ago.
When Juan and I started harvesting enough cacao to sell, we thought Great, one more step on the road to sustainability.
With our first harvests, we did like the farmers around us: toiled for days in the field, cut hundreds of heavy cacao pods from the trees, carried them in backbreaking loads and opened each fruit with a machete to extract the cacao seeds.
Then we hauled the sacks of raw cacao in our battered Russian jeep to the local distributor, the first of many more middlemen before cacao ends up as dried beans, cacao nibs, or chocolate. Any idea what we were paid for our toil to extract 200 pounds of raw cacao? A whopping $72. Thirty-six cents per pound. Roughly $1.20 per hour of labor. Meanwhile, a 3oz dark chocolate bar made with Ecuadorian cacao can easily sell for $7 or more. That’s a markup of nearly two thousand percent!
Now, let me ask you: Is that fair?
I asked myself while I was dragging a sack of wet cacao out of the field that weighed nearly as much as I do. And again when we saw a small old woman sell a small bag of cacao and take her small amount of money directly to the market to buy food. This is subsistence farming: a poor person barely getting by while the CEO of Nestlé rolls in billions. This is so wrong, I vowed, I have to do something.
Another full moon rose, another harvest. Right there in the field, covered in sticky pulp and mosquitos, I had an epiphany. I can dry and shell these beans myself. I bet people would buy them directly from me. I hunkered under a tree, pulled out my phone and posted to Facebook. Fresh cacao beans from Ecuador. Who wants some? Within hours I had enough orders to tell me I was hunkering in a real opportunity.
We worked madly to harvest, ferment, dry, roast, shell — all by hand — and fulfill the orders. Every available surface was covered with drying cacao beans. We needed packaging, labels, customs clearance, and online checkout, and all of it is more difficult when you’re outside the first world without access to easy payment platforms Americans take for granted.
But we did it. We fulfilled the orders. We are processing and selling our own cacao. We do every step of the processing right here at Sueño de Vida. You buy it directly from us with zero middlemen adding to cost.
Direct trade means you get truly artisanal cacao at a very good price.
We aren’t raking in millions, but the money we do earn goes right back into the farm and to pay our two "cacao technicians" a fair wage.
I make it a point to treat Kevin and Yandre as part of the business, not just hired employees. I ask questions to find out what keeps people from adding value to their goods. Cost of processing and lack of infrastructure top the list. I ask them how they could overcome these challenges. They ask me a lot of questions in return. I show them exactly how much I sell our processed cacao for, how much goes out in labor, packaging, and shipping. I want them to know what is possible, what is reality.
I’m not trying to be Save the Children here. I pay just wages. They work five hour shifts. They’re healthy and well-fed. They give me the side-eye when I give them my banana bread and peanut butter cookies to snack on while they work. Like, uh, we eat, patrona...our moms feed us.
What Kevin and Yandre and young people like them DON’T have is a whole lot of opportunity to do anything different than what their dads do — subsistence level farming, growing a valuable product like cacao and selling it unprocessed for pennies. Like Juan and I did in the beginning. The fact is most folks farming cacao and other goods simply don’t know how valuable their goods are once made into finished products. And the corporations buying their raw goods and making enormous profits from the finished products want to keep it that way.
One of our goals for 2021 is to increase the scope of our project by forming an association — a cooperativa — of local cacao growers. The more farmers in our area we can educate about the benefits of regenerative agriculture and processing goods, the better for us, for you, and for the earth.
Kristen Krash is the co-founder and director of Sueño de Vida, a regenerative cacao farm and reforestation mission in Ecuador. Sueño de Vida works to educate and inspire everyday people about permaculture, sustainable living, environmental activism and healthy living all in the name of living more in harmony with nature to create a better world for us all.
You can support the Sueño de Vida mission today by purchasing our cacao or contributing to direct reforestation.
Thank you.
Want to write for Sustainable Storytime?
Contact livewell@sdvforest.com for more information or to submit your work.