Welcome to our blog
We aim to help chocolate makers & consumers get to know the farms and producers responsible for exceptional cacaos and to cultivate transparent global connections, curiosity, & empathy.
Report from the field: Puerto Rico 🇵🇷
(pictured: Juan Echevarria on his cacao farm in Puerto Rico) Mike Albertini, Director of Operations at Uncommon Cacao, visited our partners at Hacienda Jeanmarie in Puerto Rico in January 2025. He ...
What is going on with cocoa so far in 2025?
Here’s a collection of the perspectives we are hearing / seeing / intuiting.
Let's stop calling this a "price crisis"
(pictured above: heat scorched cacao trees under an agroforestry canopy) I cried at my desk last week over climate change. Have you, yet? I have been working in Belize since 2010, when I foun...
Dear friends, When we started Cacao Verapaz in Guatemala in 2014, the country had not exported cacao in over a decade. Fermentation and drying centers had been sitting abandoned in rural villages a...
What is the best cacao in the world... and why is this a complex concept?
The Complexities of Cacao Selection, Production and Process: Is the best cacao innate or acquired? Cacao, with its rich history spanning millennia, is the product of labor intensive cultivation an...
What is going on with cocoa prices? Part 2
Just a few months ago in November 2023, we wrote a widely-circulated post detailing some of our observations at Uncommon Cacao around what were at that time the highest cocoa futures price...
What is going on with cocoa prices?
What’s happening with commodity cocoa? Commodity cocoa futures prices are at levels we haven’t seen in decades, with NY ICE futures trading at well over $3,900 per metric tonne (MT) the week of wri...
After months of conversations and collaboration, our 2022 report is now live!
Wild Cacao from Bolivia and HCP
Collaboration intent on supporting fine flavored cacao in Bolivia
Balancing and Growing Relationships in Peru
We honor our long term relationships with producers and are committed to exploring new ones.
Mid-Year Supply Chain Updates June is here, so that means we are already well into the peak purchasing season for cacao, and in some countries the harvest has already wrapped up. This year has thro...
Guatemalan Cacao Growers Have Grit!
Cacao Verapaz was founded in 2014 in Guatemala as a sister company to Maya Mountain Cacao of Belize and as a part of the Uncommon Cacao Group. Cacao Verapaz began by supporting local associations i...
Generations of Cultivation in the Philippines
Kablon Farms is a 70-hectare biodiversified farm owned and operated by multiple generations of the Pantua family in Tupi, South Cotabato. The family recognizes their work as part of a long cultural...
PISA is Devoted to Haitian Cacao
Bringing an accessible and bold flavor to the cacao world isn’t the only thing Produits Des Iles SA (PISA) is doing. PISA launched their centralized processing facility in 2014, which was a revolu...
Transparency and Accountability in Uganda
Latitude Trade Co. (LTC), founded in 2016, is a vertically integrated certified B Corp in Uganda sourcing from more than 4,664 certified organic smallholder producers, 2,266 (49%) of whom are women...
We believe that the difference between traceability and transparency is published and verifiable data for each and every step in our supply chain.
