Invest in a cacao farmer!

Our Kiva loans were just published online! See longer post below for more information. We are so excited to share the stories of some of our farmers with you and give you an opportunity to invest in their success. Through clicking on the link, you will see profiles of various farmers and descriptions of why they are requesting financial assistance. Then you can invest as little as $25 in a farmer, who will pay you back (through MMC and Kiva), and you can then reinvest in more farmers! Sounds addictive…

Thanks for your generosity in helping smallholder farmers this holiday season.

PS: Kiva gift cards are a great holiday treat!

New season gains speed at MMC

As the New Year approaches the MMC team is gearing up for the harvest season to reach full swing in the Toledo district. At the Cacao House we are preparing for the season to pick-up and have been experimenting with our processes in order to produce the highest quality beans from the 2013 harvest. Maintaining quality, efficiency and transparency in every step that contributes to MMC’s superb beans is increasingly important to us and our consumers and has been our guiding light in efforts to refine our process.

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MMC Goes Kiva Alfonso Pau of San Pedro Columbia has a wife, eight children and 15 years of farming experience under his belt.  A member of Maya Mountain Cacao, Alfonso has been selling us cacao from his three-acre farm since our inception in 2010. Besides other services like harvesting tools and technical assistance with nursery set-up, Alfonso is interested in a small loan to prepare for the approaching harvest season, namely with extra hands with transplanting cacao seedlings as well as cleaning and pruning to increase yields. We are happy to have Kiva here to help! [[MORE]] Maya Mountain Cacao is thrilled to become the first Belizean company to partner with Kiva – the world’s largest online microlending platform that facilitates small loans from willing lenders to underserved microentrepreneurs around the world. A credit line through Kiva will enable MMC to add small loans to a vast array of services for its 200-strong and growing cacao farmer network. Given the seasonality of income from cacao farms, and knowing that most of our farmers depend on cacao as a sole source of income, we at MMC believe microloans will be instrumental in permitting farmers to focus on improving yields and making the most of their harvest as opposed to seeking short-term employment to offset living costs. In the initial phase of its partnership with Kiva, MMC will start out with small loans ranging BZD $250-$1,000 (USD $125-$500) for the uses outlined below. Our key value proposition for our farmers is that the loans will be accompanied by customized technical assistance based on the individual needs of each farmer, together with trainings on financial literacy and cashflow tracking.  ·      Seedlings – setting up individual nurseries, grafting. ·      Tools –pruning shears, pruning saws, harvesting knives, grafting tools. ·      Pre-harvest – on-farm assistance with cleaning and pruning. ·      Farm expansion – land surveying for lease/rent. We believe microloans will have short as well as long-term social benefit by introducing liquidity in otherwise economically stagnant communities, especially during the off-season. In the short-term, we expect to see increased capacity for farm maintenance, motivation to keep with the tradition of cacao farming instead of switching to environmentally detrimental cash crop cultivation or resorting to short-term employment in urban centers. In the long-term, we expect the loans will lead to increased production per acre and thus increased income, and with it home improvements as well as more investment in education – a benefit that multiplies and extends beyond learning to improvements in health and other aspects of well being.
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MMC Goes Kiva

Alfonso Pau of San Pedro Columbia has a wife, eight children and 15 years of farming experience under his belt.  A member of Maya Mountain Cacao, Alfonso has been selling us cacao from his three-acre farm since our inception in 2010. Besides other services like harvesting tools and technical assistance with nursery set-up, Alfonso is interested in a small loan to prepare for the approaching harvest season, namely with extra hands with transplanting cacao seedlings as well as cleaning and pruning to increase yields. We are happy to have Kiva here to help!


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Last weekend marked an exciting occasion for the town of Punta Gorda, as Sustainable Harvest International (SHI-Belize) rolled out its fourth 4th annual Organic Fair! The event kicked off with a forum on Friday that featured talks on Agroforestry and the Toledo Organic Certification Scheme among other topics. The fair came to life Saturday, drawing a crowd as diverse as Belize’s ethnic composition. Maya Mountain Cacao was out there with the best of them with our booth and team ready to go as of early morning!

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