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La Siembra was established in 1999 by three young entrepreneurs. Having worked overseas, the founders of La Siembra experienced the exploitative nature of trade on the lives of family farmers. These three friends decided to provide Canadian consumers with an alternative to conventionally traded products by establishing a worker-owned co-operative. Year 1 was spent in the community kitchen of First United Church—a socially progressive church in Ottawa. As there was no fair trade certification system for cocoa-based products at that time, La Siembra’s founders adopted the guidelines of the Fair Trade Foundation. They began sourcing cocoa from a co-operative in Costa Rica and sugar from a mill supporting co-operative farmers in Paraguay. An organic recipe was developed and the founders began to manufacture and distribute a hot chocolate, sugar and cocoa line themselves.   In 2002, La Siembra worked with Fairtrade Canada (then Transfair Canada) to develop a certification system for cocoa, chocolate and sugar products in Canada and became the first registered importers of Fairtrade certified cocoa and sugar in North America. </p>