Visiting a Cacao Farm in Ecuador
What the land can teach us about a single bean
There are things about cacao that we can study for years. We can read about genetics, fermentation, varieties, aromas and processes.
And then there is walking into a cacao farm.
Walking among the trees. Opening a pod. Tasting a bean. Listening to the people who live there.
During my latest trip to Ecuador, I was reminded once again why travelling to the origin of the cacao I work with is so important to me. But this time, something was different: I came back wanting to learn how to listen with my palate too.
From Quito to the cacao farms
We left Quito early in the morning with the people who work directly with the producers and who later make the cacao paste we know at Sumay as Conscious Cacao.
Our destination was in northwestern Pichincha, heading towards Puerto Quito. It was almost a three-hour drive through an increasingly green and humid landscape, with a stop along the way to stretch our legs — and have an ice cream — before arriving around midday.
The first thing I encountered when we arrived wasn't cacao pods.
It was people.
Several farming families are part of an association, and some of them had come to meet us and share lunch. They also welcome young people from other countries who come to learn Spanish and spend some time working on the farms.
A young German woman happened to be finishing her stay that very day. The producers had prepared small gifts for her to take back to Europe, so our lunch also became part of her farewell.
Before we sat down to eat, the first surprise appeared: ice cream made from cacao mucilage, with a cacao mucilage honey to pour over it.
The honey was perhaps a little too much for an ice cream that was already sweet enough, but that was beside the point. We were tasting something they had made themselves from what surrounds the cacao bean.
And somehow, that became our entrance into the farm.
Before the cacao, a nursery
At the entrance to the association there was a nursery.
Young trees of different native species were growing there as part of a reforestation project. Some would be sold and others given away to be replanted in the area.
It seemed significant to me that this was what I encountered before we even began walking among the cacao trees.
Along the roads I had also seen much more uniform plantations, including plantations of CCN-51, a cacao widely grown in Ecuador for its productivity.
But here, the landscape was different.
The cacao wasn't alone
After lunch, we started walking.
The association brings together several family farms, and three of them belong to three brothers. We walked from one to another until, at some point, I could no longer tell where one brother's farm ended and the next one began.
And there wasn't only cacao.
There was pepper, naranjilla, papaya, aromatic plants, bananas and other fruit trees whose names I can no longer remember. I ate some of the best bananas I can remember tasting.
There were trees of different sizes, vegetation growing at different heights and plant matter covering the ground.
And there were animals, even when we couldn't always see them.
We could hear birds constantly. Woodpeckers, hummingbirds. We saw insects, stingless melipona bees, ants of every size, and bitten fruit that told us squirrels had been there, even though I never managed to see one.
And, of course, there were the Forcipomyia, the tiny midges that pollinate cacao flowers.
One of the producers decided to test how much I had learned.
He would pick tiny flowers from different plants and ask me:
—And this one? What about this one?
My test was to recognise which one was the cacao flower.
Between walking, joking, taking photographs and collecting a few cacao pods, the farm began to explain itself in a way that no diagram ever quite could.
A bean doesn't grow in a vacuum
During those days, one conversation came up several times.
Marcelo, a producer and one of the people with whom I was able to share long conversations about cacao in Ecuador, always spoke from the territory he knows: Palanda and the area where he lives and works.
He explained to me how cacao behaves there and how its environment forms part of its expression. Because talking about cacao in Ecuador doesn't mean talking about a single reality: Palanda is not the same as the Oriente or the Coast. The soil, altitude, climate, vegetation and the conditions in which the plant grows all change.
From his experience, taking a seed from one place to another doesn't mean reproducing exactly the same cacao.
Genetics can travel, but the land changes.
Research also shows that the sensory profile of cacao does not depend solely on genetics. Studies comparing cacao grown in different environments have observed effects from both genotype and environment on the aromatic and sensory characteristics of the beans.
And then comes everything that happens after harvest: fruit ripeness, fermentation, drying, storage and transformation.
That is why talking about the flavour of cacao means talking about many things at once.
Producing cacao also means supporting a family
It is easy to visit a tropical farm and see only the beautiful picture.
The trees. The birds. The fruit. The tiny flowers. Green everywhere.
But a cacao farm is not a stage.
It is also a workplace and a family's livelihood.
Over lunch, I listened to the producers' stories: how they had become part of the project, how they worked their farms, what else they grew alongside cacao and how they organised their lives.
There are years when cacao produces well and others when the climate makes the harvest difficult. There is rain, disease and storms. There are children studying, accidents, family problems and economic decisions.
The other crops growing on the farm aren't simply part of a picture of biodiversity. They also feed families and form part of the life and economy of the farm.
And behind all of this is the community.
People sharing problems, knowledge, work, food and celebrations.
I think it is important to tell this part of the story because sometimes, from Europe, we talk about the origins of cacao while constructing an image that is a little too perfect.
The countryside isn't only butterflies and hummingbirds.
The countryside is life. And life contains beauty, but also uncertainty.
Even a small harvest can teach us a great deal
We didn't arrive during harvest season.
On other trips I had been able to take part in complete harvests, but this time was different. We were only able to collect a few pods to taste ourselves.
And perhaps precisely because of that, I paid attention to something else.
Flavour.
Opening a pod and tasting the beans one after another began to become a different kind of exercise for me.
I found nuances that perhaps I wouldn't have known how to identify before. Differences between fruits, between beans, between places.
Not because I didn't already know that cacao from different origins can taste different. I work with different origins precisely because I know those differences.
What was new was realising just how far that diversity could go, and how much I still had to learn to perceive it.
Knowing intellectually that genetics, territory and processing influence what we eventually find in the cup is one thing.
Experiencing it there is another.
Coming home with a different palate
I travel to origin because I need to know the cacao I work with.
I want to know the people. See the trees. Understand how they work. Walk the land from which something will eventually arrive at Sumay as cacao paste.
But every journey ends up teaching me something I hadn't specifically gone there looking for.
This time, it was the palate.
I came home wanting to learn more. To open my perception even further when I taste cacao. To pause over a bean and ask myself what I am actually finding there.
To understand more deeply what comes from genetics, what comes from the territory, what happens later during fermentation, and how much of all of that we are ultimately able to recognise when we taste cacao.
After so many years working with this plant, one of the things I love most is discovering how much there still is to learn.
Perhaps that is part of why we travel to origin.
Not to come home believing we know more.
But to learn to look, listen and taste more deeply.
About this article
This article is part of From the Origin, a series in the Sumay Library where we share experiences, conversations and lessons gathered directly in the territories where we work with cacao.
The personal observations in this article come from Sumay Cacao's journey through Ecuador in 2026.
Sources and references
- Research on the influence of genotype and environment on the sensory and aromatic characteristics of cacao, Agronomy, 2023.
