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.
An Inside Look at Cacao Verapaz
Roy (Technical & Quality Manager at CV) conducting a cut test. Hello! Mike here, Supply Chain Manager at Uncommon Cacao. Guatemala is such a fascinating country, I am very fortunate to have rec...
International Women’s Day has come and gone, but we don’t just celebrate women one day a year. We continually recognize them as essential in the cocoa value chain and chocolate industry. Sarah Larw...
Mike (UC Supply Chain Manager) is visiting Belize and Guatemala. We love it when our team gets to spend time together in person! Back Row: Roy, Nikte, Diane, Santiago, Salvador, Serapio, Teddy Fron...
2020 Transparency Report Back in the field in Guatemala this week for the first time since November 2019, I have been reflecting on how quickly these two years have passed since the pandemic starte...
Continuing to do the Anti-racist work and What that looks like over a year later
It’s been over a year since the Black Lives Matter movement had renewed protests and calls for action and justice to be served over the unjust murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbory...
We have a lot to tell you about the work Cacao Verapaz has done this past year with the cacao producers of the northern region of Guatemala! It has been a long and intense road, but we are grateful...
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...
We believe that the difference between traceability and transparency is published and verifiable data for each and every step in our supply chain.
