La Orquidea chocolate uses the highest quality cocoa beans found in Peru and the world. We preserve the natural aroma and flavors of our cacao in each of our bars.
Making our chocolate near the fields where our small scale farmers' cacao is grown provides fair paying wages to women in eastern Peru. Other chocolates send their beans halfway around the world to be turned into chocolate and then to you. We stay as local as you can with chocolate.
During the 1980's and 1990's, there was not much of a culture around cacao in the San Martin region of Peru. Coca dominated the province of San Martin because the market for coca was strong and paid well. Some farmers grew cacao, but it was not as profitable as coca.
International commodities brokers were not looking to pay farmers well for their cacao, so farmers continued to grow the crop that did pay well, coca.
The brokers scoured the globe looking for the most desperate cacao growers who would take anything they could get for their production, leaving Peruvian farmers to grow coca.
Eradication of coca has punished farmers while failing to reduce the prevalence of coca in Peru. Eradication efforts cause farmers to move their coca crops every couple of years to avoid eradication of their livelihood.
Farmers clear swaths of rain forest, plant coca, harvest, and then move to another area of rain forest, clear that and continue the cycle. Farmers in San Martin needed to provide for their families, and coca was a crop that allowed them to feed their families. Destructive strategies do not address the underlying reasons for coca production.
Sustainable alternatives to coca have been sought for years. In the early years, low value crops were suggested to farmers as substitutes to coca. The low value and labor intensity of the alternatives made them unsustainable. Would you want to work twice as hard to earn less than half as much?
Our chocolates use the highest quality cacao grown in the Peruvian Amazon. We have been making specialty chocolate in Eastern Peru since 1998. Our factory has organized training seminars for farmers in the region, educating them on how to produce high-quality cacao and how to properly ferment the beans, developing the rich flavors naturally found in cacao. We work to develop our farmer's communities because that is where we are located.
Our US operation, Peruvian Chocolate, is working to bring recognition to our brand and our efforts.
