The “Cacao Girl” of Colombia
One woman’s journey bringing sustainability and new business opportunities to Colombian women farmers and single mothers
Carolina tastes the sweet white pulp of a cacao pod harvested on La Especial.
Carolina tastes the sweet white pulp of a cacao pod harvested on La Especial.
Carolina Trujillo picks up a machete and cuts a dark yellow cacao pod hanging from a low branch. The oval-shaped fruit lands in her palm, extending a few inches past her fingers. She slowly slices the pod down the middle and tears the fruit in half, revealing sweet white pulp. The fruits of her labor are nestled underneath: over 30 beautiful brown cacao beans.
The Trujillo’s farm, named “La Especial" (Spanish for “The Special One”), sits on a long dirt road from the city center of Dos Quebradas in Colombia’s central Meta region. Longtime cacao farmers, Carolina’s parents, Julio Cesar Trujillo and María Gil, started their farm when she was young.
I clearly remember that we dug the little holes with our own hands. Some of us dug, some planted, some fertilized, and little by little, the crop started to grow,” recalls Carolina.
The Trujillo family has used generations of traditional Colombian farming knowledge to develop their cacao farm. Carolina watched her family's connection to the land strengthen as the years passed and the cacao trees' crops grew.
“We never saw [cacao] as a product to sell and market,” Carolina reflected, “but rather as [something that] unified our family.”
The more time Carolina spent farming with her family, the more keenly she became interested in understanding how to care for cacao into the future. She graduated from the Universidad Santo Tomás Villavicencio armed with an International Business degree and a vision: to raise global awareness about the cacao plant and the people farming it. Dubbed “the Cacao Girl” by the faculty and her dean for her relentless research on cacao, Carolina returned home excited to apply her knowledge to her family’s farm.
Carolina's father, Julio Cesar Trujillo, owns and operates La Especial family farm in Granada, Meta, where he and his family grow and process cacao.
Carolina's father, Julio Cesar Trujillo, owns and operates La Especial family farm in Granada, Meta, where he and his family grow and process cacao.
But it was only when Carolina became a mother that her vision solidified.
As a new mother and a woman farmer, Carolina started noticing a gendered and generational divide within the local farming communities. Married Colombian women in farming towns like Dos Quebradas were often known first and foremost as farmers' wives. Single mothers faced even more considerable challenges, often lacking the resources and financial support to pursue business initiatives.
And as she started training cacao farmers, many of them from older generations, in more sustainable cacao farming techniques, she realized that she kept hearing the same feedback: “I [farm] the way I was taught by my grandfather, by my grandparents.” Her response to them had almost started becoming repetitive: “Well, things are changing. We can do better.”
Emboldened by the opportunity to address the issues she was seeing, Carolina decided to focus her efforts and energy on women and younger generations of farmers. With her family’s blessing, she opened a cacao business that provided new opportunities for women in Granada, the municipality covering Dos Quebradas and surrounding towns.
“I want something that shows the warmth, the love of the home, and all we can put into it,” Carolina pitched her father one day. “Not something that’s simply eating a chocolate bar, but rather [for the] chocolate to have a history and someone else to help.”
Combining her business expertise and farming knowledge, Carolina created Cacao Especial, her own business selling diuretic-infused cacao water naturally produced from cacao grown at La Especial.
She recruited women from nearby towns to create her initial team and looked to her sisters, Angela and Leidy, for additional support. Together, the three sisters created social media channels to promote Cacao Especial and spread knowledge to other farmers interested in adopting sustainable techniques. And through Angela’s recommendation, Carolina connected with Rare in Colombia.
Carolina prepares cacao beans for coffee, tea, and cacao-infused water.
Carolina prepares cacao beans for coffee, tea, and cacao-infused water.
Carolina and her mother María harvest ripe cacao on their farm.
Carolina and her mother María harvest ripe cacao on their farm.
Rare’s Lands for Life program helps farmers and rural communities adopt more sustainable and climate-compatible agricultural practices. With support from Rare, Carolina and her team learned how to compost and create natural solutions to agrochemical issues. Not only are the women of Cacao Especial learning farming and business techniques, but they’re also learning new sustainable methods that they can teach their families to continue bridging the generational and gendered divides.
Today, the Cacao Especial team is ethnically and culturally diverse, representing Meta women from all walks of life. Many of them are single mothers who have gained a new sense of confidence and financial resiliency thanks to Carolina's leadership.
This is the time for women’s empowerment,” said Carolina, beaming. “This is the moment when women take the wheel and say, I also know how to shovel. I also know how to handle a machete. I also know how to harvest.”
Carolina aspires to raise awareness for women farmers like the ones on her team. Her dream is to show the world that Colombian women are more than just farmers' wives or daughters—they are guardians of their native land, keepers of traditional knowledge, and business entrepreneurs breaking boundaries to create a brighter tomorrow for women in the sector.
“We women are, in all our splendor, very different from each other,” Carolina shares. “[And] what can be better than each one of us putting her stamp on everything we are doing?”
Photo and video credit: Lorena Velasco for Rare
Built with Shorthand