Equal Exchange staff & customers with farmers from ACOPAGRO

Name: ACOPAGRO
Location: Peru
Number of Producers: 1,800
Average Farm Size: 3 hectares
Total Area Under Organic Production: 4,500 hectares
Founded: 1997
Source For: Chocolate bars and minis, chocolate chips, dark hot chocolate

Interesting Facts: ACOPAGRO was one of the first grant partners that Equal Exchange started working with on the USAID Co-operative Development Program (CDP) back in 2010, in collaboration with implementing partner, TCHO.

Full Profile: Initially funded by the United Nation’s program to promote cacao cultivation as an alternative to growing coca leaves, ACOPAGRO is now an established exporter of quality cacao. The co-op, based in the San Martin region, has grown from 27 members in 1997 to nearly 2,000 members today, and is now the largest organic cacao exporter in Peru. In 2012, ACOPAGRO won first place in the national quality competition, Concurso Nacional de Cacao, in Lima. The co-op has diversified into other products and services like a reforestation and carbon capture program and credit service for members. With Fair Trade premiums, ACOPAGRO has invested in a new office and warehouse facility, equipment and quality training for members, vehicles for staff, and social programs such as basic food production and access to medical services like dental and eye care.

In 2018 and 2019, Equal Exchange and La Siembra staff, consumers, and supporters visited and stayed with two committees of ACOPAGRO called Dos de Mayo and Shepte. The visits were highly impactful for both the farming families and the North American travelers, so to honor this special face-to-face relationship with farmers in these two communities, Equal Exchange is working to source organic ACOPAGRO cacao directly from Shepte and Dos de Mayo with an origin premium for our organic chocolate chip supply chain.

Through the CDP grant, ACOPAGRO focused on developing flavor quality. In 2014, Quality control manager for ACOPAGRO, José David Contreras Monjarás visited Equal Exchange alongside our other Peruvian partner, Oro Verde to share cooperative models, meet store accounts, and plan for the grant. ACOPAGRO designed a CDP project to collect the data they needed in order to develop the recipes that would allow them to optimize quality and deliver consistently great cacao to their buyers. Seeing real value in what they have learned, they have now trained all of their processing managers in these protocols and they have even made the Best Practices for Cacao Processing available for download on their website. The coop has also taken model fermentation and drying infrastructure created through the CDP program and built over 30 replicas on their own.

If you would like to learn more about this partner, please read their Partner Profile (PDF).