Esmeraldas 60% Chocolate Bar

Thank you so much for your review and support, it's very important for us and the over 4,000 families of small farmers Paccari works with.

Thank you so much for sharing this David. It means a lot. We wish you all the best.

Thank you for your comment, We understand that the price issue may have caused you the feeling you express, but you may not know that Pacari in Ecuador pays 2, 3 and more times the Fairtrade minimum price to the farmers. We do believe that farmers can't live with the actual arrangements and 2700 US$/ ton or US$2.7 per Kilo paid to small farmers organisations is too low (this is the Fairtrade organic price, non organic is US$2.4/Kg). This one key reason why the price you see is higher than others. Also Pacari works with fine flovour cacao beans, protecting the biodiversity of Arriba Nacional cacao beans, instead of using traditionally used CCN51 cacao beans that are cloned and do not bring anything on natural flavours plus those plantations only help to reduce the biodiversity of the original cacao trees of the region. For Pacari preserving the biodiversity is an important factor. Pacari is helping to empower farmers to ask more for this fine flavour cacao beans so they can also guarantee its survival. By purchasing a chocolate like Pacari made in Ecuador rather than in the UK, means that over 45% of the wealth of these chocolates stays in Ecuador rather than 6% to 8% from a traditional fair trade chocolate made in the UK, Europe or the USA. There are many more issues which differentiate Pacari from other companies and being recognised as one of the top ethical brands and as a Best Buy brand by Ethical Consumer Magazine does also make us feel we are doing the right thing. We don't believe chocolate should be a way of keeping people in poverty and perpetuating child labour as it has. That in order to have cheap cacao we have to burn and destry the rain forest to have plantations of cheap cacao. We have to learn to pay what is fair and what makes the supply chain sustainable. We hope this information helps you understand the difference and may help you to feel a bit different in the future.