Auro’s history and partnership with Serge Auro’s chocolate journey began in 2010 with the dream of producing a unique chocolate made from the Heirloom Criollo cocoa variety. As it was being replaced by more productive but less flavorful hybrid cocoa varieties in the last decades this variety was almost threatened with extinction. After many journeys through the Philippine cocoa plantations in search of the Heirloom criollo variety in the verge of extinction, we met with Rolando Bueno in the Calinan district of Davao. Rolando is better-known as “Serge” because he served as a sergeant in the Philippine Marines until his retirement when he started to dedicate himself to cultivating cocoa. Serge and Auro are part of a movement known as “from arms to farms” teaching retired marines how to cultivate criollo cocoa. From arms to farms “My name is Rolando Bueno. I am 60 years old. My nickname is “Serge” (short name for sergeant) since I am a retired member of the Philippine Marines. I am a farmer now. I grow cocoa in the Calinan area in Davao in the Philippines. I started growing cocoa when I retired from the Marines and became an ordinary civilian again. In the past, the cocoa cultivation did not receive a lot of attention from the Philippine community but interest has been slowly growing and it now represents a key economic activity for the region. We are training ex-Marines to grow cocoa and enable them, along with their families, to be able to make a living from their cocoa crops. The discipline we have learned in the Philippine Marine is very similar to the one needed in being a farmer. You feel good when ordinary people acknowledge the results of your hard work. “It makes us feel special that, thanks to Auro and CrowdFarming, we can cultivate the land knowing that citizens in any part of the world are waiting to receive the harvest of their tree. "