Digital traceability from bean to bar
How Kallari cocoa producers have strengthened their digital traceability system to comply with regulations, improve efficiencies and increase production.
Asociación Kallari’s youth team carry out data collection in the field (Photo: Asociación Kallari)
In the competitive global market for fine-aroma cocoa, excellent cacao bean quality is no longer enough: buyers demand absolute transparency in the supply chain from bean to bar. With the imminent implementation of international regulations on deforestation-free production, cocoa organisations now need to demonstrate with satellite precision that their crops do not threaten forests.
For the Artisanal Producers Association of Agricultural and Livestock Goods of Napo (Kallari), located in Tena in Ecuador’s Napo province, this was a major challenge to maintain access to international markets.
Kallari is one of five grassroots organisations represented by the Corporation of Associations of the Amazonian Chakra (Corporación de Asociaciones de la Chakra Amazónica) – also known as Corporation Chakra – that brings together hundreds of producer families that manage thousands of hectares under the Amazonian Chakra system.
Kallari is made up of 390 member families (185 women and 205 men), 99% of whom belong to the Amazonian Kichwa Indigenous Peoples. Kallari’s challenge was not to change its members’ chakra farming methods – a sustainable and ancestral agroforestry system managed by Indigenous communities in Ecuador – but rather to demonstrate it is sustainable, plot by plot, using georeferencing.
Forest and Farm Facility activities
Until 2022, Kallari’s internal control system was manual and paper-based. Many documents were lost or damaged, and it took months of administrative work to audit all the members. It needed to digitise its systems to maintain access to markets.
The Forest and Farm Facility (FFF) contributed to funding the operational transition to full digitisation, while also maintaining a trained technical team – mostly young people – for fieldwork. A comprehensive digital inspection form was implemented with the technicians, consolidating the guidelines for deforestation-free production.
Significance of impact
The traceability process is now much more efficient: field audit time has been reduced by 70%. Today, it takes just one month to prepare the audit to certify producers, with minimal risk of human error.
This has led to considerable growth: from 490 traceable production units in 2023, the association scaled up to 600 units in 2024, and by 2025 it had integrated 777 units into its system – a 59% increase in traceable units driven by FFF.
The digital system has also created jobs for the association’s young members. The system is operated by a youth team: five field technicians, a data secretary, a server manager, four post-harvest technicians (who issue digital receipts on site), and a commercial traceability technician. Digitalisation has retained young talent within their own territory.
Conclusion
The implementation of this digital traceability system has solidified Kallari’s commercial credibility, allowing it to accurately trace the origin of each batch of cocoa and comply with deforestation-free production regulations.
Kallari has also managed to expand its traceability standards to other agricultural chains, such as vanilla, macambo and guayusa.
Today, the association exports with the certainty that its farms protect the Amazon and secure the future of its young people.
Further reading
Climate change resilience via production that preserves biocultural heritage, Carlos Poso (2020), Kallari case study
News: Ecuador strengthens forest-positive agroforestry value chains in cocoa and coffee, FAO (2026)
Video: Results of the Forest and Farm Facility in Ecuador, FAO (2026)