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| Slow Food Foundation for Biodiversity |
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25/05/2010 |
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Cacao brings Ecuador and Mexico together
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One of the most important benefits of a Presidium is being able to network with producers and technical experts and learn from situations around the world. By talking and meeting, people can exchange knowledge and ideas, discuss production techniques, problems and solutions.
 In the latest example of this process, in April three representatives of the Chontalpa Cacao Presidium from Mexico visited the Cacao Nacional Presidium in Ecuador.
The Mexican Presidium was created from a small group of producers who grow their cacao organically and use traditional processing methods; the Ecuadorian Presidium developed from some Quinchua producers who had formed the Kallari Cooperative to protect the small numbers of remaining Nacional trees and help native communities to improve their processes for cocoa bean fermentation and drying.
During their week-long visit, the Mexican producers were able to look round the cacao plantations, observe the fermentation and drying facilities, see where the chocolate was made, meet the managers of the cooperative and study the organization at all stages of the chain.
 The Ecuadorian Presidium is a very interesting project. It is one of the few involving native communities, which have a shared facility for fermenting and drying the beans. This enables a standardized high quality product to be achieved, which has become famous and even exported to the USA.
This opportunity to study the Ecuadorian project in detail was a valuable stimulus for the Mexican producers to develop and improve the Tabasco project.
"We are very happy that we had the opportunity to find out about the Kallari project. It is admirable, a real example of well-organized sustainable production", observed Alma Rosa Medina Garcés, coordinator of the Presidium and Director of the Asesoría Técnica en Cultivos Orgánicos, the local association which has coordinated the producers since 2000. “This visit will be a great help for the work we are doing to develop the Chontalpa Cacao Presidium\".
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