Best Agricultural Producer

Quinindé, Máximo Pincay stands quietly behind a plastic table, offering his products like any other farmer. There are no airs, no trace of self importance. Yet in his hands lies a grain of cacao that has carried Ecuador’s name across the globe: PMA 12, to most, known as “Cacao Pincay”, a variety revered for its aroma, yield, and excellence, celebrated far beyond the borders of Esmeraldas.

His humility is disarming. To see him at a local fair, chatting with neighbors, sliding sacks of produce across the table, is to miss at least at first glance that you are in the presence of a man whose work has shifted the course of Ecuadorian cacao. On his finca Flor del Bosque, amid the lush green of Quinindé, he grows corn, oranges, tangerines, even rare endemic fruits unknown to most Ecuadorians. But it’s cacao that has made him a benchmark.

Pincay’s journey began in 1989, planting cacao from seed without guidance or support. By 1993, alongside his wife Gladys Escobar, farming became a family vocation. In 1996, with training from the MCCH foundation (Maquita Cushunchic), the Pincays embraced organic produce, pruning, and post harvest methods, unlocking a relentless cycle of experimentation. Through grafting, they selected the most productive trees, a process that led to their breakthrough: the PMA 12, a cacao producing 30 quintals of dry beans per hectare sometimes 40 in the coastal zones of Esmeraldas.

It is not yield alone that sets PMA 12 apart. Its flavor carries elegance and passion: a fruity blend lifted by a nutty undertone, a complexity that won over buyers in Santo Domingo, Quito, and eventually beyond Ecuador’s borders. Máximo himself believes it to be the result of his love for his land. “You must love your soil, love your farm, love your family to produce.”

Through his discovery, the Pincays have helped transform farming across the region. “We told God that if he gave us this variety, it would be for all the struggling farmers of the area,” Pincay recalls. True to their word, he has shared planting material freely with neighbors in need, spreading prosperity and strengthening Ecuador’s fine cacao production.

From Quinindé to Europe’s finest chocolate houses, Máximo Pincay’s cacao has traveled far, even as he remains grounded in his land. His story is proof that world class excellence often begins in the patient hands of a farmer.