Cocoa, one more ingredient in a tourist city that “sells happiness” in Ecuador

Nestled in the Andean heart of Ecuadorsurrounded by waterfalls and luminous viewpoints, guarded by a volcano and accustomed to “sell happiness” With walks and adventure, the city of Baños de Agua Santa sweetens its visitors with a “Magic Factory”which seeks to end the “injustice” of the chocolate industry by transforming a cocoa cultivated with an ancestral and ecological technique.

This cultivation method is called Chakra Amazonica, a model of sustainable land use where families manage the productive spaces of their farms under an organic and biodiverse approach, which offers social cohesion, food security, maintenance of cultural values ​​and a megadiverse landscape.

In the Chakra (orchard) of Tena, fine aroma cocoa is grown, which the Baños de Agua Santa Magic Chocolate Factory buys from the Kallari cooperative, a community organization made up of small producers of the Kichwa indigenous nationality, who live in the province. Napo Amazon.

Kallari, which benefits more than a thousand families directly and indirectly, buys cocoa from the small producer at $135 per quintal, $30 more than local merchants, but the “Magic Factory” pays 190 dollars, Bladimir Dahua, Kallari’s administrator, told EFE, when talking about “fair price”.

“By paying a better price, we contribute to the subsistence of the production chain of this organic cacao from Chakra, managed by indigenous Amazonian women”Guido Calderón, director of the Monteselva Group, to which the Magic Chocolate Factory belongs, told EFE.

The additional money allows Kallari to provide technical advice, training, work tools and inputs to improve the living conditions and employment of small producers.

Catherine Cerda, a partner at Kallari, told EFE that they also offer leadership workshops for women, who transfer ancestral knowledge through the Chakra, where cocoa is grown along with timber, fruit, medicinal, craft, edible, and ornamental species.

“This generates unique characteristics that only the Chakra can produce because, due to its weakness, intensive monoculture cocoa is constantly fumigated with a plane”Calderón noted, noting that this model has raised the income of small producers and has prevented the clearing of the forest or the hunting of wild animals.

A brand showcase

Embarked on the traceability process, which offers information on its sustainable and deforestation-free production chain, as required by the European Union (EU), among Kallari’s clients there are large chocolate producers, Dahua points out, but the Magic Factory maintains your visible brand and “That is not done by anyone”.

Cerda stressed thate “thanks to the Factory, it is made known to many local and foreign tourists” the planting process and ancestral knowledge, information acquired after several visits to the production areas where Calderón saw the “joy to live in the jungle”what he wanted to share in his facilities.

Visitors who come to the Magic Factory know the origin of the raw material, who produces it and under what conditions, which gives more value to a product that, grown at 600 meters above sea level, is not bitter. As a result, they produce “chocolates with a very high percentage of cocoa and a very small percentage of sugar”.

the chocolate route

An integral part of this project is to create the chocolate route from Baños – the main destination in the Andes for adventure, rest and fun in Ecuador – to Tena, Calderón said, noting that they have already trained dozens of cocoa farmers.

“We are teaching them the process to make chocolate and try, one day, to get out of this injustice” of being exporters “of the best cocoa in the world” and importers of chocolates.

“(The Swiss) have millions of cows and export cheese. We have thousands of hectares of cocoa and we export cocoa, not chocolate”, He remarked when recalling that some producers have cried with emotion when seeing their raw material turned into chocolates, ice creams and cakes in the Magic Factory, a tourist place where the laughter and running around of visiting children mix with the sweet aroma and flavor of chocolate. .

generally in “Baños de Agua Santa we sell happiness”says Calderón to define the magic of a city of viewpoints and hot springs where elves are part of their culture and where there are enchanted forests, the devil has a cannon and the moon poses suspended on a hill to be immortalized in photos. of the tourists.

Source: EFE