08/09/2026
🇧🇷 Three Brazilian farms, three very different approaches to cocoa.
🌳 Fazenda Ararauna: treats conservation as part of agriculture. The Nüscheler family combines cabruca agroforestry with biodynamic farming, while protecting 39 hectares of Atlantic Forest as a Private Natural Heritage Reserve. Cocoa is one part of a much more diverse farming system.
🧑🌾 Fazenda Bom Jesus: is the story of adaptation. When witches’ broom threatened cocoa production, Patrick René Labarrère responded by developing a more resilient agroforestry system and selecting trees adapted to local conditions. Decades later, the farm remains focused on regeneration, soil fertility and biodiversity.
🌱 Fazenda Liara: takes diversity into the field. Cocoa grows alongside coffee, vanilla, black pepper, cupuaçu, mangosteen, açaí and other crops, creating a complex agricultural environment rather than a monoculture.
🔎 For us, these farms are interesting because they demonstrate that agricultural decisions are part of cocoa quality — despite being part of the same coop each plantation is kept separate from the trees selected to the ecosystem they grow in.
