About Us

We work to increase quality, and trade equality of natural cacao from farm-direct and contribute to sustainable cacao futures.

We do this by inviting people from the whole industry to our nurseries and sharing our insights of the 10 core factors that are important to cacao. During this, we conduct in-situ genetic research, and practice the setup and management of a variety of cacao nursery and farming locations. Afterwards, we bring them to the market and sell them. We teach, as we learn, and learn, as we teach. It is a live classroom with real trees and trade, farmers and retailers.

The 10 core principles of what we develop, research and teach are: 

 

We believe that by treating the entire industry to insights of itself, we can make the industry more fair. Until now, we have trained 600 people and literally increased the quality of natural cacao grown and traded, assured traders and buyers of improved markets and thus secured higher direct prices for farmers.

We have a cacao nursery which is available for in-personal technical development in the Philippines, as well as kitchens and boardrooms in Europe for the industry. We also offer delivery via digital means, through logins here for webinars and virtual training. For example, we:

• Train farmers and workers around cacao in the areas of genetic varieties, origin planting and farm management, focused on natural, chemical free agroforestry principles. Details include how to set up a nursery, graft, and nurture a natural cacao plantation, how to make fertiliser and sell it to related-farms, and be more informed about financing and legal land rights.

• Set up and manage access to and supply of high quality natural grafted planting materials, including biodiverse cropping (coconut, bananas, beans) and high quality natural fertiliser for farmers and cooperatives who need it. Additionally, with financing when required.

• Set up and manage co-operative of shared services for cacao fermentation, drying and bagging. Facilitate trade between farmers, cooperatives and buyers from Europe (bean to bar manufacturers) including quality control.

• Set up and manage co-operative of shared services for grinding and post harvest value added cacao (grind to mass, extract butter, powder) sales including quality control and trade facilitation.

• Test new to market ideas about sustainable energy, processing and agro ecology with European and Australasian partners, including inform conservation of natural in-situ cacao genetic diversity, #HowTos for other developing regions and best tech implementation.

The nursery we teach from is 3 hectares which is the average size of 90% of the world’s cacao farm holdings. We believe it is important to teach from farms to boardrooms as our members span the entire industry chain. 

The reason why we made a nursery in the Philippines and a HQ in Germany as our CACAO.academy home of research is because the Philippines is  not yet on the world market as a cacao supplier. Therefore, we can positively influence both the representation of the cacao as well as work in an environment which has legal and diplomatic elements, which we can verify from our base in Germany.

We serve as a forum for all 10 stakeholders - farmers, cooperatives, government agencies, agri-commercials, traders, integrators, grinders, producers, manufacturers and retailers -  to come together, learn and engage about the entire industry. This is possible today due to the participation of many of our partners, from government to buyers, who are interested in developing the supply chain of cacao; which is why we range from farm to boardroom. The rise of bean to bar chocolate, consumers being curious about their food supply and governments setting agendas on ethical supply chains feeds the need for us to take a more active role in the complete process. From our research, there are about 15,000 farmers within reach of our teaching nursery and we easily host others from diverse regions around the world.

We look to not only positively influence the quality of cacao being farmed and sold, but also use the base to influence the rise of ‘flavour’ beans and eventually, set up a protected origin for the cacao of the region. In doing so, we are setting the first precedent for protected cacao in the world. By creating a system and certifying the cacao from the region, we assist farmers to increase their prices, as has been done in other regional foods. We are also celebrating their terroir and matching it with quality standards, to create more of an assurance for farmers and traders, of the the worth of the crop they are negotiating.