Visit a Cacao farm in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

In our opinion,visiting a finca de Cacao is one of the must-do activities on a trip to Colombia.

Cacao is one of Colombia’s hidden treasures that we tend to forget. Yet, like coffee, it’s a food we’ve known since childhood, without really knowing where it comes from or how it’s made!

In this article, we recommend a cocoa finca to visit in the Buritaca area , on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada, about 1 hour from Santa Marta. But this is no ordinary cocoa finca!

We invite you to delve into a part of Colombia’s history. It’s the story of Jeider, a former coca farmer turned cocoa grower. A singular story, the story of thousands of Colombian farmers.

From coca to cacao

The story of a Colombian farmer

We meet Jeider at the entrance to the path leading to his farm on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. The walk through the forest to the finca is the occasion for a lively discussion with Jeider on the origins of cocoa, its history in Latin America, and its implantation in the region.

The path is steep, but we take our time and enjoy the lush, beautiful jungle.

At the bend of a river bathed in light, Jeider pauses to tell us his story , and thus that of hundreds of peasants in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, and of thousands of Colombian farmers.

In the 1990s, the Sierra Nevada was invaded by paramilitary groups, armed militias financed since the 1950s by large landowners to “fight” Marxist guerrillas.

But in those years, the paramilitaries were also involved in drug trafficking, forcibly seizing land from indigenous peoples and peasants. Many indigenous families and communities were threatened and forced to leave their homes and land. The paramilitaries’ aim is to grow coca and produce cocaine on a large scale in the Sierra Nevada.

In this territory, where the indigenous populations have been growing coca since the dawn of time for cultural and medicinal purposes, the blow is terrible. Their land is being stolen and their sacred plant, coca, is being used to produce cocaine and sow death and chaos.

For the peasants who have “chosen” to stay on their farms, the message is clear: grow coca or you’ll be in trouble. Jeider’s family are among the farmers who chose to stay and accept the paramilitaries’ conditions.

For 1990 years, Jeider and his family grew coca, even building a clandestine laboratory hidden on the finca. Living outside the law and under threat from the paramilitaries, this was a dark and difficult period.

When, in 2003, the government signed an agreement with the paramilitaries (immunity against the laying down of arms), farmers were offered programs to replace illicit crops: receiving aid to replace coca with another agricultural activity (cocoa, plantain, honey, etc.) or tourism. In practice, paramilitary groups continue to control the territory, and local militia leaders order farmers to choose between participating in these programs or leaving the Sierra Nevada and abandoning their land.

Several families, including Jeider’s, agreed to take part in the program, while many fled the Sierra to grow coca elsewhere in the south of the country.

Transformation will not be easy. State support left much to be desired. The question of the family’s ability to support itself by growing cocoa will be raised.

But in the end, Jeider has a powerful phrase to sum it all up: “we’ve recovered dignity, we’ve recovered territory, we’ve recovered the ecosystem, and all that added up, if you can call it peace, then today we’ve recovered a little peace and that’s priceless.”

Understanding cocoa farming

From cacao tree to chocolate bar

For Jeider, this digression into his personal history was necessary. He felt it was important to raise awareness of certain realities in the lives of Colombian peasants. But don’t be fooled into thinking that this tour is simply the testimony of a former coca farmer.

We are indeed on a cocoa tour , and Jeider’s entire discourse returns to the cocoa plant and its production. Before we get to the actual plantations, Jeider shows us a “wild” cocoa tree.

The story goes that cocoa comes from Mexico, but this is not the case.

What is certain is that in Mexico, cocoa was the food of the gods for the Aztecs, a sacred fruit that only the powerful could enjoy (even as a drink in those days). It was also long used as a currency of exchange.

But in truth, the cacao tree is thought to have originated in Amazonia. Endemic cocoa trees are found throughout the equatorial forests of South America.

Cocoa plantations

Although thanks to genetic modification of varieties, cocoa can now be grown at altitudes of up to 1600m (in tropical climates), the best quality is produced between 0 and 800m altitude with unmodified varieties.

The finca produces 36 different varieties of cocoa. Cocoa comes in a variety of colors, from green to red, through all shades of yellow and orange.

There are two harvests a year, each lasting around three months. Fruits are harvested every 10 to 15 days during these 3 months.

Along the way we’ll taste different raw beans, which (like coffee) are surrounded by a kind of sweet honeydew called “mucílago”.

It’s amazing how each variety has a different mucílago flavor. And, of course, once roasted, you can imagine that these flavor differences are also present.

We finally arrive at the farm, where Jeider’s family is waiting to share a meal with us. This is where all the finca’s cocoa is processed.

Cocoa processing

Before being put out to dry, the beans are locked in barrels for a short (9 days max), but essential, fermentation process . The beans need to reach a certain temperature before being spread out in the sun.

Here again, timing is critical: 4 days of full sunlight are needed to achieve optimum drying of the cocoa.

Once the beans are dry, it’s time to move on to roasting. Until now, everything has been done by hand in the traditional way. A big wood fire, a large frying pan, the cocoa beans and a spoon are stirred, over and over again, to try and get an even roast.

Once roasted, the chocolate can be made.

Fabrique ton chocolat” workshop

Visit to a Cocoa Farm

It’s time for us to take part in the workshop to make a 100% pure cocoa chocolate bar with no added butter or sugar.

Once the cocoa has been roasted, we have to remove the skin by hand, bean by bean.

Then we use a grinder to transform the cocoa bean into chocolate paste. No butter, sugar or anything else is added, just a little honey for those who like it.

The idea is to make a 100% natural chocolate bar that we can then use to make chocolate drinks.

In Colombia, on traditional farms, pure cocoa is traditionally diluted in water. Of course, in the shops, you can find low-quality cocoa that has already been processed and sweetened. But always in bars to be melted in hot water.

The tour ends with a good peasant meal, discussions continue and we enjoy the exceptional view from the finca of the Caribbean coast, with the beaches of Tayrona Park in the distance… then we begin the descent to the troncal del caribe and new adventures.

Gracias Jeider!

Not-so-fair trade

Tour du cacao

Interesting to talk to Jeider about fair trade principles.

For him, fair trade has promoted the education of farming families by demanding high standards of cocoa quality and ecosystem protection.

Another positive point is that fair trade cuts out the middleman. The cocoa producer is therefore supposed to be better paid. Better paid than with an intermediary, that’s for sure.

Well paid? That’s another problem.

Contrary to what you might think, in fair trade, the producer does not set the price he deems necessary to make a decent living from his (hard) work.

In reality, as always, the market dictates the rules.

A “normal” person cannot produce more than 1 hectare of cocoa under these traditional conditions. With 1 hectare of cocoa, the farmer produces 500 kg of cocoa per year. The price of cocoa is set by an international stock exchange and is highly volatile.

To give you an idea :

• January 2024: 5000 USD per tonne ($5 per kg)
• April 2024: 1500 USD per tonne ($15 per kg)
• June 2024: 8000 USD per tonne (*8 per kg)

This is a very special time for farmers, as the price of cocoa has skyrocketed. Until a few months ago, it was very difficult to make a living from growing cocoa. To survive, producers have to invent by-products or, for example, tourist experiences.

In practice, large groups like Nestlé are gorging themselves while the farmers are being paid very little.

Even now, at the height of the cocoa boom, the price of cocoa is not passed on to the producer. There is an average price that varies only gradually over time, and never at the real levels of the international stock market.

At the time of our visit, Jeider was being paid 15.000 pesos per KG.

A quick calculation:

• 15.000 pesos per KG
• 500kg produced per year for 1 person
• Approximately 7.5 million pesos in revenue per year
• 600.000 pesos a month (about $150 a month)
• Or half the “minimum wage” in Colombia (1.300.000 COP/month)

That’s a lot to think about…