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- In Belize’s Maya Golden Landscape, small farmers have partnered with conservation groups to establish the country’s first forest reserve agroforestry concession, growing shade-tolerant cacao while protecting forest cover and biodiversity.
- The agroforestry system has helped restore degraded habitats, reduce illegal activities, and support the return of wildlife like jaguars, pumas and scarlet macaws, while keeping forest loss significantly lower than in nearby unprotected areas.
- Farmers are now major cacao producers, selling to local and international markets at premium prices, with the crop’s distinctive flavor attributed to being grown among native trees in organic, diversified agroforestry systems.
- Artisanal chocolate makers and farm tours promote traditional practices, attract visitors, and support smallholder incomes, while agroforestry systems also contribute to jaguar-friendly landscapes and wildlife corridors.
The Maya Golden Landscape in southern Belize is a patchwork of protected areas, agricultural lands and small communities, part of the greater Maya Forest, the second-largest tropical forest in the Americas, after the Amazon. It’s a haven for predators like jaguars (Panthera onca) and pumas (Puma concolor), and threatened species like Baird’s tapirs (Tapirus bairdii) and harpy eagles (Harpia harpyja), among countless others.
Yet this landscape, like so many others in the tropics, is under continuous pressure. Land managers have had to balance the needs of biodiversity with those of the communities living here. And they’ve turned to cacao, a traditional Maya crop still widely cultivated for home consumption — and the raw ingredient for chocolate — as part of the answer.
Belize’s first agroforestry concession
The Maya Golden Landscape spans around 300,000 hectares (about 741,000 acres). About one twentieth of this area – 14,569 hectares (36,000 acre) – is dedicated to Maya Mountain North Forest Reserve, a type of protected zone where limited extractive activities are permitted. The reserve was established in 1997, and initially faced the same pressure that besets much of the area: the encroachment of banana and citrus plantations, poaching, and illegal logging, especially along its southern border. Portions of the reserve were stripped of their protected status in subsequent years, but the problems persisted.
In 2012, a group of farmers from the nearby community of Trio, along with the nonprofit Ya’axché Conservation Trust, proposed agroforestry as a way to reconcile the needs of communities and conservation. The farmers wanted to cultivate cacao, a shade-tolerant crop, within the forest reserve in a way that would also allow the forest trees to remain standing. After three years of lobbying, the government agreed. In 2015, Trio Farmers Cacao Growers Ltd., made up of 31 mostly Indigenous Maya farmers, and the Ya’axché Conservation Trust established a 379-hectare (937-acre) agroforestry concession in Maya Mountain North Forest Reserve, the first within a forest reserve in Belize.
Under the concession management plan, the Trio farmers adhere to certain conditions: at least half of the land must be set aside for conservation; areas under cacao production must maintain a 60% level of forest cover in the first five years, and a minimum of 30% thereafter; no synthetic pesticides or fertilizers may be used; and farmers are prohibited from clearing brush using fire.
Ten years on, through the planting of cacao and other tree species, the farmers have restored degraded habitat, bringing forest cover back to a healthy level, says Christina Garcia, executive director of the Ya’axché Conservation Trust, which became a co-manager of the reserve in 2015.
Today, the odds of forest loss within the concession area are 85% lower than in the areas removed from protection, according to a 2024 study. It also found that the odds of forest loss were 16% higher in the concession area than in the rest of the forest reserve. However, this requires a “nuanced interpretation,” says study lead author Santos Daniel Chicas, an assistant professor of agro-environmental sciences at Kyushu University in Japan. He adds the objective of the agroforestry concession was to balance protection with sustainable economic development. After initial clearing for cacao, there was no further forest loss from 2019 to 2022, he says.
Illegal activities within the area have also dwindled, as farmers became the “eyes and ears” inside the reserve, says Garcia, who wasn’t involved in the study.
“When we first took on implementation of the agroforestry concession, we didn’t see much wildlife, and we have baseline data to back that up,” Garcia says. “Now we can find the five cats of Belize within the area. We can find the scarlet macaw, which we didn’t have before, and many other species.”
Farmers have benefited, too. In 2024, Trio Farmers Cacao Growers reaped a record harvest of 63.5 metric tons of wet beans, making them the second-highest cacao bean producer in Belize, Garcia says.
Ya’axché also works with farmers in nine other Indigenous Maya communities within the larger Maya Golden Landscape to implement agroforestry for both cacao and coffee, along with other “climate-smart” agricultural practices.
Traditionally, Maya farmers in the region practice slash-and-burn agriculture. But as land has become more scarce, fallow periods have fallen from 10-15 years to just a few years. That means the land doesn’t have time to adequately recover from clearing. And, with climate change, burning adds to the risk of escaped fires.
“We’re not here to dictate or to trample on any traditional practices,” Garcia says. “We’re here to teach people that are interested in other ways how farming can be done, especially with what we’re seeing with climate change.”
Now, with demonstrated success and world prices of cacao rising, farmers are converting small cattle pastures of 4-8 hectares (10-20 acre) to cacao plots, Garcia says.
Belizean cacao has always commanded relatively high prices on the international market, owing to a reputation for distinctive flavor, says Jose Coy, managing director of Maya Mountain Cacao Ltd., a major purchaser of fresh cacao beans in southern Belize.
Founded in 2010, the company, which operates on a social enterprise model, buys fresh cacao beans from more than 500 smallholder farmers, including Trio Farmers Cacao Growers.
The fresh beans, called wet cacao, are brought to a central processing facility for fermentation and drying, which yields superior quality, Coy says. Maya Mountain Cacao facilitates the organic certifications for participating farms, and exports the dried beans to specialty chocolate makers around the globe or to local producers.
Coy attributes the high value of the Belizean beans to the way the cacao is grown alongside citrus, coconut and other fruit trees, as well as hardwoods like mahogany, madre de cacao and other native species.
“You’re able to taste some of those fruity flavors … So it gives it a rich flavor,” Coy says.
Ecotourism adds value
Just off Belize’s southern highway, at the turnoff to the world’s first jaguar preserve — Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary — lies a brightly painted building with picnic tables and a concrete statue of a cacao pod out front.
The Che’il Mayan Chocolate company, founded by Maya farmer Julio Saqui in 2010, is one of a growing handful of companies in Belize that produce and sell artisanal chocolate domestically.
The cacao for Che’il Mayan Chocolate is all grown on small family farms including Saqui’s own, under agroforestry using organic methods, he says, in line with the Maya respect for the land and the cultural importance of cacao.
At first, Saqui says, he found it difficult to break into the domestic market. His artisanal chocolate is made with just a few ingredients, and melts quickly in the heat; he couldn’t convince resorts or local shops to carry it. However, when he realized that he could instead “let the market come to him,” things started to turn around.
Che’il Mayan Chocolate now offers traditional chocolate-making demonstrations and farm tours. It sells chocolate bars, cacao powder and other products directly to visitors. Saqui employs 10 people, and through the purchase of beans, the business also supports other small farmers.
“We’re about education, we’re about experience, we’re about tradition,” Saqui says. “I think we are the first ones to begin to show this as a potential income generator, not only for us, but for the whole country.”
Last year, WWF Mesoamerica concluded a project with Ya’axché and other partners supporting cacao agroforestry in communities near Cockscomb and other protected areas, as part of a larger initiative on jaguar-friendly landscapes.
Camera traps placed on the farms showed that jaguars, pumas and other wide-ranging species traversed areas under cacao agroforestry, says Ivanna Waight-Cho, terrestrial biodiversity officer with WWF Mesoamerica.
“Having [wildlife] move from a block of forest through … agroforestry systems to another block [is] quite beneficial for them in terms of their movement and distribution,” Waight-Cho says, though she notes they don’t have data on wildlife presence in other land-use types. It also benefits farmers looking to tap into ecotourism, she says.
“These farmers are very excited to have these species show up in their farms,” she says.
Banner image: Drying cacao beans before crushing them. Image by Etty Fidele via Unsplash (Public domain).
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Citation:
Chicas, S. D., Mizoue, N., Ota, T., Kyaw, K. T. W., Valdez, M. C., Nielsen, J. Ø., & Chen, C. F. (2025). Cacao agroforestry adoption by smallholder farmers and forest loss prevention in the Maya Golden Landscape, Belize. Ambio, 54(5), 882-898. doi:10.1007/s13280-024-02106-4
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