 | Social Impact & Special Achievements | | | Alter Eco Foods, a B-Corp headquartered in San Francisco, is a certified Organic and Fair Trade chocolate-centric, sustainability-directed food company that takes healthy indulgence to a new level. Our mission is to pioneer a full circle approach to eating, farming, and doing business – and to inspire others to do the same.
Since our inception in 2005, Alter Eco Foods has built a transparent and traceable supply chain, including direct relationships with our cacao-growing and quinoa-growing partners. This allows us to see firsthand the impact of our activities on farmers and the environment. While reinforcing the importance of our Fair Trade values, as well as our commitment to organic and regenerative farming, our field visits also opened our eyes on the fast degradation of top soil happening in cacao monoculture, and on the food insecurity cacao farmers experience relying only on an export crop. That’s what brought us to focus on regenerative agriculture, transitioning many of our cacao-farming partners in Ecuador and Peru from monoculture to dynamic agroforestry, planting other crops like banana and beans in their cacao fields. We’ve already seen improvement and restoration of the soil, which is now able to nurture healthier cacao trees. We've also seen improvement on farmers’ livelihoods, with added crops providing additional revenue and shaded moist fields providing better working conditions. Our model encourages growers to “farm like a forest” as it has a myriad of environmental benefits, from carbon sequestration above and below ground, to increased water retention and enhanced biodiversity.
In addition to our chocolate, Alter Eco’s quinoa restores ecosytems and farmer livelihood. In Bolivia where we source our quinoa and pay a fair price to producers, we have implemented projects in collaboration with our supplier to regenerate the soil. Thola trees have been planted in quinoa fields in order to prevent soil erosion and provide organic fertilizer.
For more information about Alter Eco Foods and our mission, please visit our website at https://www.alterecofoods.com/. |
