Who they are

On a trip to Colombia, we spent a day with Martha and Carlos Bautista on their farm in Garzón. They work about four hectares of mixed crops, with a pond they stock with tilapia and cacao at the heart of it, and they are planting more cacao, betting the price will rebound. We are hopeful right alongside them. They grow the careful, single-origin cacao that good chocolate depends on, and they do it with almost no equipment. To prune a whole farm of cacao trees, the work that keeps the trees healthy and the harvest coming, all they had between them was one pair of hand pruners. That stuck with us, and it is exactly where the Cacao Roots Fund begins.

Hear it from Kyle

This is the trip that started it all. I spent a day with Martha and Carlos on their farm in Garzón, walking their cacao, seeing the tilapia pond and the new trees they are planting, and noticing the single pair of hand pruners they keep a whole farm with. That visit is the reason the Cacao Roots Fund exists. Thanks to every bar sold in store and online, this one is funded, and we are buying the tools now.

What we are doing

We are buying them a full pruning kit to go alongside those hand pruners: loppers, extendable pruners, an extendable pruning saw, and a sharpening stone to keep it all sharp. All in, it comes to about $400, funded entirely by the Cacao Roots Fund from bars sold. We are sourcing the kit from a supplier in Colombia rather than shipping it from here, so the money stays in the local economy, the tools arrive without customs delays, and replacement parts are easy for them to find.

How this helps

At the back of their farm, a few trees stood far taller than all the rest. I asked Carlos why. He pulled out his hand pruners, held them up, and told me he simply could not reach that high. Martha and Carlos are getting older, and climbing a ladder to reach the top of a tree is not something they should have to do. That is the whole problem in a single moment: skilled hands, years of care, and tools that stop short.

Hand pruners alone can only do so much. They cannot reach the high canopy or cut through thick, old wood, so trees grow tall and tangled and disease spreads unchecked. With extendable tools, Martha and Carlos can do that work safely from the ground, no ladder needed. They can open the canopy so light and air reach the pods, cut out diseased and dead wood before it spreads, and bring the trees back to a height that is quick and safe to harvest. The result is healthier trees, fewer pods lost to disease, and more beans from the same land, which is income that stays with their family. Good tools are not a one-time gift either. They keep working season after season.

The goal

From their farm

What happens next

The $400 goal is met, funded entirely by bars sold in store and online. We are buying the kit in Colombia now. Once it is in Martha and Carlos's hands we will document the handover so you can see it actually happened, not just take our word for it.

The impact, after