What drove the Rainforest Alliance to begin working with cocoa farmers in Ecuador?
It made sense to draw on our experience with coffee and apply it to cocoa, which is also very important for biodiversity conservation. Both crops can thrive under shade trees, so they provide a means of conserving the landscape as well as a livelihood for thousands of farmers. Ecuador was a good place to start our cocoa program because it is the world’s largest supplier of fine flavor cocoa and we already had a presence there, through Conservación y Desarrollo, our partner in the Sustainable Agriculture Network — the oldest and largest coalition of NGOs working to improve commodity production in the tropics.
