It’s not every day you hear about a Saskatchewan chocolate farmer wielding a machete and farming cacao in the Ecuadorian cloud forest — but that’s just a typical winter routine for Robert Payant.
A fourth-generation farmer from Assiniboia, Sask., Payant splits his year between harvesting grain on his family’s prairie farm and cultivating ancestral Nacional cacao in South America, alongside his wife and business partner Tiffany Rose. The couple’s venture, Choco Estates, bridges two worlds — industrial agriculture in Saskatchewan and biodiversity-rich agroforestry in one of the most ecologically important regions on Earth.
“In the summer, Robert’s out running combines with his brother and dad,” Rose said. “Come winter, he’s in Ecuador, covered in dirt, swinging a machete and planting cacao under banana trees.”
The Payants are part of a growing cooperative that’s rewilding degraded pastureland in Ecuador’s Chocó Andino — a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) protected cloud forest that’s home to an extraordinary diversity of life. The region is also one of the last bastions of Nacional cacao, a nearly extinct, aromatic variety of cacao renowned for its fruity and floral notes.
An earlier visit to a friend’s farm in Ecuador inspired the Payants to found Choco Estates, which now includes three neighbouring farms in the country and is founded on the principles of justice and sustainability.
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