Valle Junquito

We started the day at COCABO’s office – greeting farmers who arrived with cocoa beans to sell. After a meeting with Eco Logico, organic certifiers visiting to ensure that farmers are meeting organic standards, we headed out to a nearby cocoa farming community, Valle Junquito, to meet some of the 800 people who live there.

Valle Junquito is stunning. Humble wooden and bamboo houses are nestled in the valley between lush, green hills where the cocoa trees grow. The population are Ngobe-Bugle indigenous people and there is a vibrant and lively feel to the community. We first visited the house of the village leaders, where we met Don Pinera, village elder, and Don Pedro, leader and medicinal healer, According to Sr. Pedro, "Through COCABO [the producer co-op] we received the message that we should transition to organic. Since then the price has increased and we have seen the impact of fair trade." The community consistently works to improve the quality of the cocoa, and now has 24 drying and fermentation stations erected.

On our visit we had our first taste of the sweet pulp found inside a cocoa pod, learned about the impact of monillia (a disease affecting many cocoa trees) and were welcomed into a local home for lunch.

Here are just a few of the people we met:

Daniel Santo & Anna Christina Rupinel: Getting to Daniel & Anna Christina’s farm was an adventure, as we hopped across a riverbed, rambled over bridges and climbed our way through wet soil. Daniel told us that in the beginning he was working to survive but has seen a difference since joining the co-op. He talked about the importance of crop diversification (many farmers grow bananas, pineapples, yams and other crops) as well as the co-operative and its democratic structure. Daniel and Anna Christina have 14 children, ranging in age from 2 to 31 years old.

Medina Salina Morales & Guillermo: Machetes in hand for a walk down the road, we then visited the farm of Medina & Guillermo’s, as well as a second farm located nearby. On these two visits we saw more evidence of crop diversification, a cacao nursery housing 3000 plants and cocoa pod shells being composted.

Maribelle Abrego, Lourdes Abrego and Yariela Lopez: These girls, aged 10, 10 and 7 respectively, are children of cocoa farmers in Valle Junquito and attend the community school, which hosts children from kindergarten to grade nine.