Welcome to our blog
We aim to use our platform to help makers get to know the farms and producers we partner with and to cultivate a transparent connection.
Hi friends and partners, As a new mother myself, reading the stories about the incredible women below took my breath away. Kitalibara Base, Asiimwe Alice, and Biira Jowani are goddess level; they f...
Farmer Interview: Santiago Sotz Cholom, Chivite Guatemala
Santiago Sotz Cholom, 50 years old, lives in San Juan Chivite, a municipality of Cahabón, Alta Verapaz, Guatemala. He is part of the Association for Development Maya Chivite called Ademayach (p...
Learn more about Cacao Genetics!
Criollo, Trinitario, Amelonado, Forastero, Nacional, CCN51, ICS95… What does all this actually mean? We in the specialty cacao industry are nerds about our beans, scrutinizing pods, studying farmin...
The VOICE Network puts out the Cocoa Barometer, a report covering major challenges and issues in the cocoa value chain, every couple of years.
An Introduction to the Newly Implemented Living Income Differential (LID) in Ghana & Cote d'Ivoire
On Saturday, October 3rd, the cocoa harvest season officially opened in Ghana. ABOCFA member farmers sold their harvested, fermented and dried cacao to the cooperative’s Licensed Buying Company...
2019 Transparency Data - Now Live!
It’s that time of year: Transparency Report publication!
When we were introduced to ABOCFA (thanks Jesse and Tony’s!), we learned that the cooperative had been working in all of these areas already for many years. While we had initially thought that ...
In 2019 we tried out a new model of working with chocolate makers. We established annual purchase agreements, with a goal of ensuring long-term stability for your partners at origins and cacao ...
Quality Control & Evaluation in Cacao
Uncommon Cacao has worked for years to calibrate with our origins, and set quality expectations around fermentation, bean size, humidity, defects, flavor profiles, microbial presence, and heavy met...
2019 Wrap-Up: Stasi’s Lessons and Reflections
What a year! I initially got excited thinking about the opportunity to share some lessons learned and takeaways I have from a year of testing, tasting, hunting, and discovering cacaos. When I start...
Launching QR Codes to Bring Consumers Closer to Origin
The chocolate makers who buy from Uncommon Cacao know that they are participating in an ethical, transparent supply chain when they purchase our beans. Through our radically transparent price repor...
Back from Bundibugyo: An origin report of Semuliki Forest
In western Uganda, twenty kilometers from the border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, lies Bundibugyo, a town known for cocoa production. The community sits at 800 meters, nestled into the ...
The 2018 Transparency Report is in!
Read the full Report Every year since 2012, Uncommon Cacao has published a Transparency Report showing pricing data for our supply chain and sharing stories and information about the incr...
Cahabón, Guatemala By Emily Stone The steep ascent from the Rio Cahabón to the hilltop village of Tzalamtun is one of my favorite wild terrain drives of all time. Three hours southeast of Coban on ...
A light overview of heavy metals - a cadmium story.
Follow this article on Medium here: https://medium.com/@uncommoncacao/a-light-overview-of-heavy-metals-a-cadmium-story-6ec076d2253e There’s been a lot of talk in the chocolate industr...
We believe that the difference between traceability and transparency is published and verifiable data for each and every step in our supply chain.
