ASSINIBOIA — When fourth-generation grain farmer Robert Payant left his family’s Saskatchewan homestead for work in Alberta, he never imagined his future harvest would be the world’s rarest cacao.
Today, Robert and his wife Tiffany bridge two continents — farming in Saskatchewan’s growing season and reviving near-extinct Nacional cacao in Ecuador’s cloud forests.
In 2019, a visit to a friend’s farm in Ecuador inspired the couple to purchase degraded pastureland in the UNESCO-protected Chocó Andino Cloud Forest. Their mission: rewild the land into a biodiverse food forest, cultivating Ecuador’s ancestral Nacional cacao — a floral, complex variety that now makes up less than five per cent of the country’s production.
Two farms, one vision
In Saskatchewan: Robert works on his family’s grain farm during Canada’s growing season.
In Ecuador: The couple spend winters on their cacao and cardamom homestead, surrounded by hundreds of fruit and timber trees they’ve planted. Neighbouring farmers, friends and local Ecuadorian families — employed year-round at living wages — care for the land in their absence.
Through their co-operative CHOCO ESTATES, the Payants and two neighboring farms now produce small-batch cacao and tree-to-bar chocolate.
Why It matters
As industrial chocolate giants drive prices down and farmers off their land, CHOCO ESTATES offers a radical alternative:
- Rescuing biodiversity: Nacional cacao was nearly wiped out by disease and monocrops.
- Beyond organic: Agroforestry mimics nature, cacao grows under native canopy trees, restoring soil and habitat.
- Direct trade: Cuts out exploitation; more money invested back in the farmer’s hands and the fragile ecosystem that makes it all possible.
CHOCO ESTATES’ small-batch products include:
- Single-origin cacao beans and nibs (for chefs and chocolatiers)
- Ground cacao and cacao paste (for ceremony and drinking)
- Couverture chocolate (70 to 85 per cent dark for chocolate makers)
- Limited-edition bars featuring ancestral Nacional cacao.
