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Single Origin Food Ingredients

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Together

SUPPORTING SMALLHOLDER FARMERS

Cacao Juntos is an agtech company developing new categories of natural food products utilizing single origin ingredients harvested from smallholder farmers in Peru. Cacao Juntos is dedicated in bringing together smallholder farmers sharing their harvest for the world to enjoy, and obtaining consistency in their harvest produced. Cacao Juntos produces and exports final product goods made from ingredients cultivated with care from smallholders farmers in Peru.  

 

Cacao Juntos goal is to support smallholder farmers who are eager to develop enduring relationships with someone they can trust and receive new knowledge from.  Over the years we took the time to build those relationships especially in isolated areas in Peru.  These remote locations often had very limited infrastructure, were overlooked by large cooperatives, or even had cooperatives in financial debt due to poor management thus reducing reinvesting opportunities for its smallholder farmers and ultimately impacting their market access to sell their harvested goods.  We found that building relationships in isolated areas with limited infrastructure allowed us to build a strong network and support structure for small holder communities and a bridge of accessibility to higher grade flavor profiles of produce preserved in more favorable climates and rich soil.

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Supporting Farmers

SHARING FAIR VALUE

Smallholder farmers are limited by funds and are often forced to concede to the politics of large cooperatives who control trade and influence in the area.  That's when we knew we had to do something and created a network of assistance to smallholder farmers providing microfinance and assistance in the entire supply chain including cultivation techniques, cataloguing produce, technical analysis, loaning of equipments and tools, packaging, logistics, import/export, tracking, customs clearance and delivery.

 

We have built a transparent bridge through an integrated system that shares fair value, knowledge, assistance in all levels of supply chain, and access to markets to help empower smallholder farming communities. 

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We believe that empowered thriving smallholder farmer communities are the essential foundation for sustainable farming.

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Our Story

MEET OUR FOUNDER

Cacao Juntos was founded by Matthew Lianides, a social entrepreneur and founder of Sumaq Foods in California. Matthew held various corporate finance roles in Silicon Valley before traveling to Peru and founding Cacao Juntos.  As a Peruvian descendant and feeling compelled to help Peru, Matthew partook in social projects in Peru that focused on merging technological innovation with social settings for community development.  Matthew initially started with a social fashion project that supported women artisan knitters in providing fair stable jobs and focusing on the development, process of sharing new skills to ultimately help the role of women in rural villages to become more financially and socially independent.  

 

While traveling to isolated cacao farms in the Peruvian jungle, Matthew learned firsthand the difficulties smallholders face in accessing markets to sell their harvest.  In response to this need, Matthew founded Cacao Juntos to build a sustainable platform that provides microfinancing, promotes innovative techniques in cultivation and quality, and shares fair value for smallholder farmers.  Matthew also partnered with local municipalities in the Cuzco jungle to support facilitating cacao aggregation among smallholder farmers and the preservation of the native cacao chuncho variety.  

Contact

Contact Us

Pro. Martin Pio Concha 611

Santa Ana, La Convención

Cusco, Perú

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©2023 by Cacao Juntos SAC

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