Sourcing Cocoa
The Cocoa Plan in Ecuador
Under the guidance of our Plant Research and Development Centre in Tours, France, we run field trials at Nestlé's own experimental farm in Ecuador. We cross cocoa plants in order to find more productive plants or better disease-tolerant varieties
Ecuador is renowned throughout the world for producing a special ‘fine’ cocoa called Arriba. It’s an aromatic, floral and spicy cocoa, and makes a chocolate that has all the characteristics that consumers like. It’s an important source for us at Nestlé. In fact, we buy over a fifth of the world’s fine cocoa.
The world cocoa market distinguishes between two broad categories of cocoa bean: ‘fine’ or ‘flavour’ cocoa beans, and ‘bulk’ or ‘ordinary’ cocoa beans. As a generalisation, fine or flavour cocoa beans are produced from Criollo or Trinitario cocoa tree varieties, while bulk cocoa beans come from Forastero trees. The International Cocoa Organisation (ICCO) has a panel of fine cocoa experts who decide on the countries that are recognised as producers of fine cocoa.
For us at Nestlé, the real test of fine cocoa is in the hands of our consumers when they eat our chocolate products.
Different types of Ecuadorian cocoa
Nestlé has a long history of collaborating with farmers in Ecuador. For over 40 years we have helped to develop two of the country’s major industries, milk and cocoa
In Ecuador they grow two main types of cocoa. The majority, around 75%, are the Nacional type which itself comprises over a hundred different varieties. It’s the Nacional type that produces the sought after Arriba cocoa. The other type is called CCN51, named by the breeder, Don Homero Castro, who developed it in the 1970s. While it isn’t classified as a fine cocoa, it is a vigorous, highly productive plant and is readily available to cocoa farmers throughout the country.
Over a decade ago, Nestlé plant scientists started to work with the Ecuadorian state research station, INIAP (Instituto Autónomo de Investigaciones Agropecurias) and selected Nacional cocoa tree types that would deliver the best flavour. They then set about finding ways to multiply them so that local farmers could have the best possible certified Nacional trees with similar productivity to the CCN51 trees.
Nestlé's agronomists
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Nestlé and ACDI/VOCA jointly promote the creation and strengthening of farmer associations to enable the direct sale of cocoa from farmers to the industry
Since 2007, Nestlé's local agronomists have been working directly with the Ecuadorian smallholder farmer to improve the cocoa productivity and quality through the use of better farming techniques, post-harvest fermentation and drying practices. During the beginning stages, a number of initiatives were jointly implemented with ACDI/VOCA (www.acdivoca.org), a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization, who since 2004, has trained over 21,700 Ecuadorian cocoa farmers in integrated crop management, cooperative development and cocoa marketing techniques.
Both Nestlé and ACDI/VOCA are promoting the creation and strengthening of farmer associations to enable the direct sale of cocoa from farmers to industry, which has lead to a significant increase in farmer income. In 2009, the collaboration between Nestlé and ACDI/VOCA was formalized, and as a result of our joint efforts, farmers will continue to improve yields, cocoa quality and income, especially as a result of Nestlé’s guarantee to buy the farmers’ beans at a premium price. Additionally, the farmers will continue to benefit from technical assistance from ACDI/VOCA and Nestlé cocoa specialists.
In addition to cocoa-related assistance, Nestlé is also providing nutritional education to farmers and their families in an effort to reduce malnutrition.
In Ecuador, we’re also working with several cooperatives where we’ve set up small demonstration plots with selected Nacional plants to check how the plants we propagate behave under local conditions, how productive they are and best practices related, for example, to pruning.
More generally, we’re helping cooperatives in their efforts to improve the organisation, efficiency and quality control of all aspects of cocoa cultivation, fermentation and sales.
