Strategic partnership helps rural farmers gain access to gourmet markets and repair the wounds of the past.
For thousands of years, sesame seeds have been a key ingredient for a wide variety of Greek foods, from tahini to sesame bar snacks to Greece’s most popular street food, the indistinguishable, sesame-covered rings known as koulouri.
Sesame is deeply ingrained in Greek traditions and cuisine and as Europe’s largest importer of sesame seeds, it is a great starting point to examine how specialty markets emerge searching for flavorful and artisanal processed sesame seeds.
While Greece imports the majority of its 39,000 MT of sesame from Nigeria and Turkey and accounts for 22% of Europe’s sesame imports, countries like Germany are also in the market to sprinkle tasty sesame seeds on its baked goods.
José Hernández, the founder of gourmet exporter SumaPaz Foods has traveled to Europe enough to see there is a potential for artisanal sesame from Colombia to satisfy even the most demanding gourmet chefs.
In 2018, Hernández discovered the secrets of Colombia’s sesame in the hills of Montes de María, which are located in the Caribbean region and have an ideal climate for cultivating sesame. In the municipality of Córdoba Tetón, SumaPaz began working with families involved in sesame for generations.
“Our microclimates give our foods nuanced flavors. Besides Greece, our sesame is popular in Germany, where they like breads with a sesame that is sweeter and less astringent than normal sesame,” explains Hernández.
A History of Survival
The story of sesame in this region of Colombia mirrors the ugly violence that engulfed it in the early 2000s, when the leftist group FARC expanded its control of the region and the rise of paramilitarism caught rural communities in the middle, leaving villages full of victims in its wake. Rebels and paramilitary groups moved through rural towns stealing the communities’ most important assets: livestock.
“We came to rely more and more on sesame. We are all victims, we were all displaced, and we all lived moments that we would prefer to forget. But here we are doing everything we can to make sure the violence doesn’t happen again,” says Yimmis Severinche, who helped to create the National Federation of Sesame Farmers back in 2002.
Severinche and her neighbors developed ways to transform sesame into new products, putting sesame-based pastes and drinks on the table of every family in the municipality. These families used innovation, but the violence left a hole in their community.
To help rebuild these communities, USAID facilitated a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) that includes SumaPaz, government agencies, and over 600 families from the region. The PPP was signed in 2023 and is valued at nearly USD $1.8 million. The PPP’s objective is to increase production and processing of artisanal sesame, promote organic certification, and establish sustainable market channels, especially in high value markets like Europe and USA.
First step was gaining organic certification, which SumaPaz supported with its own resources. To see the certification through, under the PPP, USAID helped to form a micro enterprise of young agronomists in the region called Integra.
“The focus today is the search for sustainability, but that sustainability is only possible if there is a functional value chain that works. Integra fills an important gap to provide services that rural farmers need,” says Hernandez.
En Route to Europe
With organic certification under their belt and technical support from SumaPaz, sesame farmers have already exported four containers of high-quality sesame to buyers in the European market. Each container equals approximately 18 tons of sesame for gourmet food buyers in Greece and Germany.
Thanks to the increased capacity built by the PPP, SumaPaz offered sesame farmers future contracts as well as a purchasing price at least 50 percent higher than the price of sesame in the Colombian market.
“The social fabric that was once broken by the violence is beginning to repair itself. USAID works with the communities and builds trust. These farmers have more confidence and are open to the tools to work on mending the social fabric,” according to Hernandez.
Cross-posted from USAID Exposure