La Equitativa, a Colombian company founded in 2012 by Swiss who, when they came to Colombia, saw the untapped potential of the Colombian cocoa value chain.

Equidad & Origen – Equality & Origin
The Equiori brand was born and today stands for the first and only organic certified chocolate from Colombia that is produced directly at its origin with local partners in order to guarantee knowledge transfer and sustainability.

The company works directly with each part of the value chain to better distribute revenues and profits.

The aim is to present a chocolate from a new country of origin to chocolate lovers around the globe, while doing you a favour, knowing that it will help hundreds of cocoa farmers to achieve a stable and long-term income and thus make a better life for themselves and their families.

www.equiori.co

CASHEW CULTIVATION FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN THE COLOMBIAN HINTERLAND

Founded in 2018, KardiaNuts is a newly established, for-profit company with the ambitious goal of contributing to the sustainable development of Colombia’s rural areas by building a comprehensive value chain for organic cashew. KardiaNuts aims to promote local rural development through employment opportunities and the provision of training and the development of responsible agricultural production methods by establishing a model farm that can be taken over by others to multiply the economic impact of the business across the region. KardiaNuts can contribute to strengthening rural Colombia with important social and environmental objectives made possible by a financially sustainable business.

Why Colombia and its rural areas? After over 50 years of internal conflict and nearly six years of negotiations, the government signed a peace agreement in November 2016 with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the country’s most important rebel group. This agreement opened the door to new opportunities in Colombia’s rural areas. KardiaNuts has made it its mission to enable neglected regions, which have lived through a long history of social injustice, to achieve integrative and sustainable economic development. The creation of genuine and inclusive rural development is the key to lasting and stable peace in Colombia

Cotton plants once grew in the fields around Chicoral Tolima, southwest of Bogotá, Colombia as far as the eye could see. But since the collapse of the local cotton industry, most of the fields have been fallow. The soil is suitable for the cultivation of other crops. For example, for peanuts, which were already used in crop rotation in the days of cotton. As a result, there is even local know-how on cultivation and some equipment.

What is missing, however, is the market! Pakka was not slowed down by this fact: the “ManiFestacion Organica” project was launched with a lot of courage, persuasiveness and investment and farmer William Arenas was brought on board as project manager. Pakka helped him with the organic certification, set up the logistics and established a cooperation with Equiori, the first Colombian organic chocolate producer. This creates new jobs, which are particularly important in a structurally weak region such as Chcoral Tolima. In a next step, further farmers will join the “ManiFestacion Organica” project and additional jobs will be created.