- Filha do Combu, a family-run chocolate factory in the Amazon makes tree-to-table organic chocolate and is an exception to this model.
- Using an agroforestry system, smallholder farms like Filha do Combu can now produce their own chocolate, which allows them to have more autonomy and control over their quality of life.
- When cocoa is grown within an agroforestry system, it helps preserve the forest by reducing erosion and the use of pesticides, as well as preserving biodiversity.
- However, there is still a lack of support from the public sector for these smallholder farmers.
COMBU ISLAND, Brazil – It is rare to find someone who doesn’t like chocolate. When the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus gave cocoa its scientific name in 1753, he chose Theobroma cacao, which means “fruit of the gods.” Over time, in order to supply the world’s growing demand for the delicacy, cocoa seedlings were moved from their native Amazon forest to northeast Brazil, central America, Africa, and Asia.
Though several of the top ten cocoa-producing nations are still in South America today, almost 70 percent of the cocoa seeds used to make chocolate are produced in West Africa.
But in the backyard of a rustic house on stilts on Combu Island in the Brazilian Amazon forest, the fruits continue to flourish in their native environment. The house’s kitchen is the heart of Filha do Combu’s factory, a family business that harvests cocoa pods from their backyard and turns them into award-winning organic chocolate. The process is known as tree-to-bar.
The business is run by a local woman, Izete dos Santos Costa, who is known to many by the nickname Dona Nena. Costa opened the small Amazonian chocolate factory in 2006. Since then it has caught the attention of renowned Brazilian chefs like Thiago Castanho and Alex Atala. Even Norway’s Crown Prince Haakon Magnus has visited to taste the product.