Let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there. How did your company get started and why?

Alter Eco was founded in 2005 in San Francisco by two young French entrepreneurs, Edouard Rollet and Mathieu Senard, activists at heart. Before starting Alter Eco, they experienced first-hand both profit-driven multinationals and on-the-ground NGOs. Seeing the challenges of existing humanitarian aid efforts, they became pioneers in social entrepreneurialism, wielding the business of food to fight for economic and social justice. That’s why every product Alter Eco makes is sourced from farmer-owned fair trade coops practicing sustainable organic agriculture. Alter Eco is now a chocolate-centric food company that helps mitigate climate change through regenerative agriculture and carbon sequestration. Recognized as a top certified Benefit Corporation and a registered Public Benefit Corporation, Alter Eco is dedicated to pioneering a better way of doing business as a force for change. The company practices a full-circle approach to sustainability throughout its operations and supply chain through four pillars: sourcing using Fair Trade principles, producing only organic and non-GMO foods with regenerative farming practices, creating minimal waste by working towards 100 percent compostable packaging, and in-setting carbon emissions by means of large-scale reforestation/conservation programs in the cooperatives that produce its crops.

What is your product and how would you describe it?

We make the most delicious whilst the most sustainable chocolate treats. We sell organic and fair trade chocolate bars and chocolate truffles, using cocoa beans grown with regenerative farming practices. We’re known for our extra dark chocolate, starting with our best-selling Blackout 85% chocolate bar, free from refined sugars or soy, and our craveable chocolate truffles, free from palm oil.

How have you pivoted your business this year?

In a year full of uncertainties and dramatic calls for systemic change, we have decided to focus on what we do best: sustainability. While 2020 was unusual in the intensity and the amount of economic, social and health crises we’ve lived, the year was in continuity with a slow but steady transformation of our environment we’ve been witnessing for several decades, climate change. The unprecedented fires in Australia and the Amazon at the start of the year, the coronavirus that have changed our lives since March, the historical calls for social justice in the Spring, are all connected to climate change, either as the result of more drastic weather patterns and of our meat consumption, or as a new necessary lens as we look for tomorrow’s solutions called climate justice. At Alter Eco, we make chocolate. Therefore, we focused where our work starts, at a cocoa farm on the Equator belt. The way we grow food today is not sustainable. Agriculture is responsible for a quarter of the world’s carbon emissions, accelerating climate change. Aggressive and intensive farming practices, monoculture, pesticides, and deforestation are destroying our soil, removing its essential nutrients. Farmers, especially cocoa farmers, still struggle to generate a living income from their labor. At Alter Eco, we believe in the power of regenerative agriculture. A way of farming that’s not only resilient to climate change, but actually has the potential to reverse it. A way of farming that respects our incredibly valuable soil and respects the human beings who grow our food. A way of farming that’s not new, but has been used for centuries by indigenous people living in harmony with nature. In 2020, we decided to take action. In October, we launched the Alter Eco Foundation, to help transition cocoa farmers from monoculture to a model of regenerative agriculture called dynamic agroforestry. Instead of rows of cocoa trees under the hot sun, picture fruit trees, beans and timber trees planted alongside cocoa in a naturally balanced system. In agroforestry, falling leaves and branches become compost or food for the soil. There is more shade, and therefore rainwater is conserved longer in the soil. Farmers can feed their families with the food they grow on their land. Farmers have better working conditions, working under the shade and in cooler temperatures. We envision a world where farmers, as they feed us, can also feed their families. We envision farmers capturing carbon from the atmosphere, and create a regenerative system that gives back to the soil more than it takes. We envision a planet that will nourish us for many generations to come.

What is your next challenge to overcome?

Our next challenge is to expand our reach: how do we transition more farmers to dynamic agroforestry, especially in a pandemic world where travelling is restricted? How do we therefore train cocoa farmers remotely? How do we find funds for a transition to, granted, a more sustainable and resilient model on the long term, but with several years with a significant financial impact on farming communities? How do we make regenerative agriculture mainstream, as an urgent alternative to the existing soil-damaging and carbon-emitting monoculture? How do we educate consumers to shop with climate change in mind?

What do you predict for the food industry over the rest of the year?

My wish is that every stakeholder in the food industry has finally realized that we can’t go back to how business was being done pre-COVID, that we have to build back better. Last April, I was on a call with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and a few hundreds like-minded companies discussing what climate measures around agriculture, transportation, energy, packaging, Congress could include in relief packages, in order to build back better. This momentum gives me hope, 2021 may be the year the food industry starts necessary systemic changes. The industry is large, so it is just a dream, it may take more than one dramatic year to change every business owner’s decisions and behaviors, but I have hope.

Learn more at: Organic Chocolate Bars & Truffles | Alter Eco (alterecofoods.com)